Sometimes you need to just disconnect a bit, and one of the things I’ve been doing for years now is ensuring I remain connected. Phone, tablet, laptop and smartwatch all working to keep me in touch with the various facets of my life; but recently I had a review device that made me wake up a bit to the nature of always being connected – The Nokia 3210.
It’s such a dumb phone, but in a good way – it was nostalgic, it was simple and it did what it says it will; make calls and texts. Plus, it has snake but I digress. As part of this, I spent some time really disconnected, because without a smartphone to connect it to my smartwatch was kinda dumb too. So I spent some time with the elegant Timex Marlin with a feature set that includes time, date and stopwatch.
It’s such a joy to disconnect
If you’ve not made the effort to (or feel you simply can’t for some reason) disconnect, then I can’t recommend strongly enough that you do. Years went by without being “on call” to our friends and family 24/7 and society survived, so not checking your chosen social media platform, or work email for 72 hours certainly isn’t going to cause you any harm.
I found by disconnecting a bit on weekends in particular, meant that I was spending more time doing things I enjoy and being in the moment. With young kids, I can’t put in words how much this means to be there.
Even when I wasn’t working on a full digital detox, I started choosing to wear the Timex on weekends because simply reducing my awareness of the notifications coming in; reduced my self-imposed need to check them. This brought me to an interesting realisation, that a lot of the notifications I had on my phone weren’t genuinely useful to me, there were simply for awareness and I was barely glancing at many before swiping them away.
What started as a plan to review something “tech” but not smart, or connected tech had in unexpected impact. Using a plain, old-school, time-telling watch resulted in not just a short term disconnection, but a better overall digital health footprint for me.
Comfort and function
Having predominantly worn smart watches in some form for the last 5 years or more, I’ve become used to having the band quite tight. This is to ensure a good connection for heart rate monitoring, that the sensors get a good reading on your activity and so you can feel the haptics when you get notifications. With a normal, “dumb” watch that’s simply not required and I enjoyed not having the band firm around my wrist, in fact, going to bed without a watch on was almost refreshing in itself.
The fact that all it does is tell the time is also very refreshing, because that’s the only reason I’ve been looking at it for a while now. There’s also the remarkably welcome bonus of not needing to charge it every morning (depending on the watch) to ensure it will actually see you through to the end of the day.
It’s plain — but elegant — and it achieves exactly what you would from a watch like this. It tells the time and displays the current date: Taking me back to a simpler time, when mobile phones were the size of a car battery and only carried by people who can afford them.
Would I recommend a plain, old, non-smart watch?
The reality is that for a lot of people these days, connection is — for a variety of reasons — critical. So removing one of those points of connection just isn’t practical. But when you’re going on holidays (Or it’s the weekend) and don’t need that constant connectivity, it can be truly delightful to be present with your family.
One thing I’ve definitely learned — after years of becoming more “connected” — is that there’s a line between being connected and setting yourself up for burn out. There’s a place for smart tech in our lives, but it doesn’t need to be all-day every day. I’ve found a better balance, and I’d encourage anyone to reduce their connected time when they’re with family and friends.
Timex watches can be purchased online direct from Timex, or through chosen jewelery retailers; the Marlin costs $399.95
