We need to step back from our hyper digitized world.

When I arrive at the office on a Monday morning I tend to be a little earlier than the rest of my colleagues. I leave home early to avoid having to rush, and so I have plenty of time to deal with any unexpected road closures or punctures without being late to work. Sometimes I get to my desk when the lights are still off, and at this time of year the morning sun shines through the windows, transforming the familiar space with a soft, natural light. After a weekend it’s a nice way to ease myself into the work week, and get a chance to enjoy my first coffee before the madness starts.

Always sooner than I would like however, the first of my colleagues arrives with the sound of the door slamming reverberating through the open plan office. After a few moments the beautiful, golden light is drowned out by pale, fluorescent light as the switches are flipped and everything is turned on. The silence is broken by the rushing sounds of air-conditioning fans overhead and with a subdued “morning” my workday begins. I click open my inbox and watch the list of new emails grow along with a familiar headache just above my eyebrows.

Like most companies, the one I work for is fixated on increasing productivity. They love to “interrogate the process,” and make things “lean” the way Toyota does it. I work behind three monitors so I can seamlessly multitask, and process information as quickly as humanly possible, and for when my humanity gets in the way, the company has implemented a range of AI tools that raises my productivity to acceptable levels far higher than I could manage on my own. It looks great on the monthly figures, but every quarter the expectations on me are raised a little further beyond the scope of my employment agreement.

It’s a constant assault on my senses. The endless phone calls, meetings, emails, and spreadsheet presentations wear me down by the end of the day. By Friday my frayed nerves twitch like an abused ragdoll, and I’m convinced I can, not, do this, anymore.

But it doesn’t stop there.

The overstimulation follows me home as well. My phone dings to let me know it’s about to rain. My new camera reminds me I need to connect it to Wi-Fi so it can run an update. I have to use an app to get the best prices at the grocery store, even after I fight with the self-checkout machine that randomly selects me for a screening a fifth consecutive time. I open another app to pay, and switch back to the store app to scan a bar code that lets me through the little gates at the exit (this might shock any Americans out there but dutchies find it normal). When I finally wind down in the evening my smart TV tells me my streaming app needs an update before I can watch anything, but while I wait I make the mistake of looking at an ultra addictive social media feed that steals a chunk of my evening. By the time I go to bed, shapes and shadows are dancing inside my eyelids like black and white cartoons, constantly morphing and changing shape, equally revolting and appealing in one.

But then, if I’m lucky, the power goes out.

The house is thrown into a perfectly still blackness, my senses are heightened, and I can hear myself think for the first time all day. I walk to the kitchen to investigate and I see the whole neighborhood is affected. The house is quieter than I’ve ever heard it: no fridge motor, no air conditioning, no pc monitor making that low whine you only hear at night, just a thick, tangible quiet. Once my ears adjust I hear the low rushing sound of wind in the nearby trees, and lean to peer out the window. My eyes are drawn upwards, and in the pitch black sky I see more stars than I ever dared to believe existed. I step outside to have a better look and immediately notice I don’t hear any traffic. No far away mopeds, no power tools, no whirring sound from some fan cooling some unknowable machine, just the wind in the cluster of sycamore trees, and the chirping of nearby crickets. It’s another world we’ve forgotten about, existing just beside the mayhem of ours. It’s one our forefathers knew well, but one we ignore because it scares us a little.

I often wonder what it would be like to go back to a more analogue world. One where we still write things with a pen, instead of banging away on plastic keyboards that make sentences magically appear on the same screens that give us headaches. Where old, dogeared pages, and highlighted passages remind us of why we love that book, before we became distracted by a laggy, ad-covered tablet that eventually became obsolete. I wonder if society could go back to creating real things in the real world, instead of watching a handful of people do them as we scroll our way through another lengthy bathroom break.

Maybe enjoying the mechanical sound of an old typewriter doesn’t make you a pretentious hipster, but gives you the chance to slow down just long enough to write something you really mean, instead of another comment on a meme you care about for as long as it takes your hot pocket to warm up in the microwave.

We’ve overdone it with technology to our mental and physical detriment.

It’s making us forget about the things we value most in life; connection to others, work we can be proud of, and the freedom to choose how we spend our time. But if you think the Wi-Fi connectivity of your espresso machine truly helps you achieve a better life, I want to hear from you in the comments.