Detox Week

This week, I started working on nothing.
Yeah, I know — that sounds like I didn’t even open the terminal.
Well, in strict theory, I wasn’t allowed to.

I started the week with some basic rules:

1. No reading anything
2. No social media
3. No work
4. No emails
5. No learning
6. No LLMs like ChatGPT
7. No music with lyrics
8. No podcasts
9. No multitasking
10. No messages (WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.)

Note: The rules above could be broken only if something important came up.

One of the hardest rules was not reading. If you do this exercise, you’ll quickly realize how difficult it is not to read when you’re trying to avoid it. We don’t notice how much we read during the day — even the small labels on a whole milk package. You’re still reading, and that becomes mental trash for your brain.

The goal for setting this titanic task for the week was simple: get a detox.
Simple, but hard to follow. By the third day, I was really fighting against the boredom.
I found myself counting stuff in my house — I have 4 chairs and 1 table.
Then I started wondering: when was the first dinner at that table?
Before tables existed, did people even have dinner and lunch "times"?

First Day

The first day was filled with constant thoughts like: What am I doing? Why am I opening social media again when I know I can’t do anything?
I would just close it and put my phone back in my pocket.
I deactivated notifications on my Apple Watch.
I was on a very strict regimen.
I felt like I was going insane, doing this.

But the day happened normally. I interacted more with people at the office, talked more, and saw people I hadn’t seen before.
It was interesting, to be honest — not tough at all.

Second and Third Day

These days were the toughest — the most difficult on my calendar.
I was dying of boredom.

At work, I had a schedule to follow. It was hard to maintain.
Obviously, I had to keep reading emails and messages, but I avoided going deep into conversations unless they tagged me — if it’s not important, I let it go.

At home, it was even harder. I had nothing to do.
I watched a documentary about the Titan submersible.
If you remember that day in 2023 when a group of people went underwater to explore the Titanic wreck — that one.

It was the first time I finished a documentary in one sitting.
I hadn’t realized how often I’d watch 2-hour documentaries in fragments over months.

On the third day, I was extremely bored.
I started drawing to keep my mind busy.
That small act helped me: to start something and finish it — just because sometimes you need to finish what you start.

Fourth Day

A day without music, without podcasts, taught me about the micro-trash in my mind.
All that noise and stimulus forces my brain to be in response mode all the time.

That day, my anxiety was lower.
It helped me analyze myself and reflect on the constant rush of change happening every day in tech.

Final Day

The final day was smooth.
I think I lost my phone for most of it.
No messages — only the Apple Watch, in case I needed to answer a call.

I enjoyed that day.
With a cigar.
In nature.
Just listening to the sounds and peace.

I hadn’t felt that kind of peace in a very long time.

Thoughts

During this week, I wrote a lot.
I observed more.
I listened to people more.
I interacted more.

I did a retro inspection with myself — having internal discussions I had buried in my rush to be productive.
It felt like a pause in a chaotic world.

I wrote again on paper — adding all my ideas, questioning myself:
What do I want to do?
Why am I doing what I’m doing?
How do I see myself in 5 years?
How do I see myself as an 80-year-old man?

Yes, those are cliché questions — but they help when you stop for a second and really think.

Learning

This week didn’t change my life — I wish I could say that just to get more views.
But It did open my mind though.

It’s okay to rest.
It’s okay to be sad.
It’s okay to not finish that book.
It’s okay to not finish that project.

what’s not okay is losing the present though.
Losing the connection as a human being.

There’s a long way to go.
I still have things to learn, stuff to accomplish, projects to get done.
Maybe I’m one week behind others — but this isn’t a competition.
It’s not even a race.

This week showed me the positive side of boredom: it leads to creation.
I drew. I picked colors. I made combinations.
Maybe people will say it’s the worst drawing — but who cares?

I wrote things I’ll probably never read again.
But that was a mental drain I needed.

The negative side of boredom wasn’t that bad either.
It just showed me how badly my brain had gotten addicted to quick answers, quick feedback, quick everything.

From now on, I’ll probably set a 10-minute timer for social media.
10 minutes for reading emails.

By the end of the week, I had received 150 emails on my personal account — and 95% were trash.
All that junk is taking up space in my brain, displacing the important stuff I actually want to do.

No, I won’t finish my projects in one day — but the 2–3 hours I used to spend on social media?
That could be one more line of code.
Or just paying better attention to the podcast I actually care about.

I really love listening to music.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m that guy blasting music in the morning on the way to work.
But I had never noticed there was a lake on the way to work.
Walking was better.
I breathed better — without headphones or my phone.

It’s okay to not answer the phone.
If it’s important, they’ll call you.
Trust me.

Pause, Just Once

If any part of this resonated with you, I invite you to try your own version of a detox week. You don’t need to follow every rule I did—just pick a few and notice what happens when the noise fades. Give yourself space to be bored, to reflect, to observe without distraction. It might be uncomfortable at first, but on the other side of that silence, you might rediscover parts of yourself you’ve been too busy to hear.