It’s a little bit ironic how disconnected we’ve become from one another in today’s hyperconnected world. Social media, streaming, and endless notifications often keep us from being truly present with the people around us. Technology, while convenient, can make it harder to reach out and engage with those in our lives on a deeper level.
Carlos Whittaker, an author and speaker, recognized this struggle firsthand. To break free from the screen-driven habits of modern life, he decided to spend seven weeks living completely tech-free among monks in California and Amish farmers in Ohio. Immersing himself in their simple, intentional lifestyles, Whittaker sought to rediscover the lost art of being human in an age dominated by technology.
Ahead of the release of his new book Reconnected, Whittaker shared how the experience radically shifted his perspective on how we use our devices and interact with the world. He discussed what he learned from that journey—including the importance of solitude, savoring everyday moments, and embracing the beauty of being fully present with others.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
RELEVANT: Why and how did you end up living with monks and Amish farmers for seven weeks?
Carlos Whittaker: We all get our screen time notification, whether you’re on an Android or an iPhone, on Sunday. It comes by and you normally just don’t even look at it because I don’t want to feel bad about myself. I don’t want the phone to shame me. I decided to do the math one day and just see what my seven hours, I think it was seven hours and 23 minutes, was. Initially, I was like, but this is what I do for a living. I’m on Instagram, I make YouTube videos, so I kind of excused it. But the math told me it was 49 hours a week on my phone. I was like, wow, that’s two whole days of the sun going up and down while I’m looking at my phone, which equals three months a year. I remember not being able to breathe. I literally don’t live for three months of the year. I stare at my phone.
And then I kept doing the math. If I live to be 85, I’ll spend over a decade looking at a screen. This is just my phone. This isn’t TV. This isn’t my laptop. So, me being me, I was like, okay, what do I do? I’m always trying to figure out how to help not only myself, but others. So, I emailed my agent and said, what if I didn’t look at a screen for seven days? That’s how it started—seven days. What if I moved into a cabin somewhere? He said, I don’t know if that’d be interesting enough. So, then it kept going to 14 days, 21 days. I emailed Dr. Daniel Amen in Los Angeles at the Amen Clinics. He’s a neuroscientist. I asked him two questions: how long would it take for my brain to change, and would you scan my brain? He answered the second question first and said, absolutely, I’ll scan it before and after. He said it’s going to take about two months. I was like, what? That was terrifying, but I was like, if there’s ever been a perfect lab rat for an experiment like this, it’s me. So, I flew to LA, got my brain scanned, and ended up living with monks.
Now that’s a whole other story—how I got to the monks. I lived with them for two weeks, with the Amish for two weeks, and with my family for three weeks. So, it was seven total weeks with no screen. The monastery was in the high desert of Southern California. My wife’s father, who I never met, used to be a high-level volunteer at this monastery and knew all the monks. So, they knew my wife when she was five years old running around the abbey. Heather called the abbot, who she knew as a little girl, and he said, I remember you. She said, my husband wants to live with you guys for a week or two. He said, yes, have him come. That’s how I got in with the monks. Then the Amish—I have a friend who married a former Amish. He left the Amish to marry her, but he’s still close with his family and community. So, he put in the good word for me, and I ended up living with the Amish for two weeks.
And just so people know, I did it for seven weeks so you don’t have to. Every chapter is the most applicable book I’ve ever written. Everything I learned or relearned, because we’ve forgotten how to live without our phones, we can still do with our phones. The book isn’t about the phone being bad. It’s about what’s beautiful on the other side of the phone. I do a lot of great things on my phone. So, I’m not shaming people for looking at their phones. I’ve just given us about 20 things that will make us pick our phones up less.
What were some of the surprising things you learned or relearned on this journey?
For me, the monks were awesome. The Amish were awesome. I had a blast shearing sheep and chanting in Latin. I talk about all those things in the book. It’s a fascinating peek into two different subcultures. But what I learned started with wondering. About seven hours into this, I went to the monks first, right? So, I went from seven and a half hours a day to monk-land—23 hours a day of silence. You don’t eat meals speaking except for lunch. You eat with monks and guests in total silence. It was the craziest thing. I remember sitting in the chapel—they pray six times a day—and I started wondering why they do this six times a day.
When I started wondering, I reached for my phone, but it wasn’t there. I thought, I just have to wonder. I can’t find the answer. It hit me day after day that we’re the first generation to have legitimately lost the skill of wondering. If you’re with a group of friends and say, “I wonder,” you pick up your phone and Google ruins wonder within one second. I didn’t have the opportunity to know things like that anymore. I had to wonder constantly, and the wondering led to questions, which led to more questions, which led to creativity. I thought, what are we missing because we find the answer so quickly now? Wondering is gone. Solitude is gone.
There’s a book called The Lonely Century that talks about how we’re the first generation to legitimately not have access to solitude anymore. Solitude is gone. Those were some of the initial things I was like, wow, I’m really in it. When I was with the Amish, I had to go somewhere. Willis, the sheep farmer, said, “Carlos, I need you to go to the feed store and pick up this part for my tractor.” He’d send me away on the e-bike, but he had to tell me how to get there. I just had to remember. A 20-minute e-bike ride in Mount Hope, Ohio, ended up being two hours because I kept getting lost. But I’d meet somebody, and they’d say, “Yeah, you took a wrong turn. Go down here.” I’d talk for 20 minutes, and their kids would come out, and I’d kick the ball with the kids.
I realized we no longer get lost and find our way. That’s intrinsic to the human experience. Now, I look up directions before I go somewhere and write them down on a piece of paper or napkin, just like it was 1985. Sometimes I get lost, and guess what? I don’t know if maps will reroute me if there’s traffic or an accident. Maybe I’ll sit in traffic for an extra seven minutes. These were daily things that I go through in the book, and there are about 20 of them. We’ve forgotten how to do them, and I’ve given us handlebars to recapture wondering, getting lost and finding our way, and recapturing the table. The average American meal 100 years ago was 90 minutes long. The Amish meals I shared lasted an hour or more. We’d talk, we’d argue, but we’d do it over a shared love for food. The average American meal in 2023 is 12 minutes long.
Suddenly, I was able to reconnect with something. This is why we can’t disagree with others and figure out a way past those things—because we’re not even face-to-face sharing these conversations over meals. Emily, I could keep talking for hours because there was so much goodness I had to reconnect with on the other side of my screen. All of these things make me pick up my phone a lot less.
What are some ways we can implement practices to help us reconnect?
At the beginning of the book, when I’m at the monastery with no access to information, that’s when I realized how much we have access to constantly. I’m in the high desert, and I walk out thinking, man, it’s hot. That’s it. I don’t know how hot it is. We’re used to pulling out our phones and saying, “It’s 97 degrees.” I never knew the temperature once. It was crazy. One thing I loved was waking up to an alarm clock, not my phone. I had to buy an alarm clock at Target, and when it woke me up, there were no notifications waiting for me.
Studies show that the first 30 minutes after waking and the last 30 minutes before bed, we consume more content than my great-grandparents consumed in a month. That was sobering. So, I’ve continued waking up to an alarm clock. My phone charges in the kitchen, and I don’t look at it for 30 minutes after waking. I begin to savor—there’s a whole chapter on savoring. We don’t know how to savor anymore because we’re always doing two things at once. Now, when I drink my coffee in the morning, it tastes so much better because I’m just drinking coffee, not reading emails or scrolling Twitter. That’s why your coffee tastes better the first day of vacation. You’re just drinking it.
Another thing I’ve done is delete all the news apps off my phone. I deleted X off my phone. I subscribed to a newspaper. Every morning, I walk out with my coffee and pick up the paper, open it, and read the news. If something happens on Earth, I’ll find out about it. If not, I’ll know the next morning when I read the paper. These small practices help me savor more, notice more, be still more, and move at what I call Godspeed—the speed of the monks. They move at three miles an hour. Everything is slow. It’s changed my life, my family’s life, and my friends’ lives because I’m so much more present. For seven weeks, I never had one buzz or notification go off. So, when I was talking to someone, I just talked, and nothing pulled me away. It’s really changed the game.
It’s been awesome for not only me but my friends and family.
