Email Habits – learning from camping

I went camping for the first time at Suwannee Valley Camp in White Springs FL. Car camping is fairly effortless since one has the luxury or carrying an extra blanket and pillows. The part of the camp ground was devoid of utilities and I had to rely on the main camp buildng for power, wi-fi and bathroom facilities.

AT&T has no 3G coverage in White Springs. Edge takes longer for data transfer and more battery life. Being on a minimalist overdrive,  I switched email from hourly push updated to manual only.

Friday through Sunday, I proceeded to immerse myself in the fantastic folk sounds of guitars, banjos and harmonicas at the Florida Folk Festival. I rode my xtracycle from stage to stage. Every time I used the phone to take a picture, check the weather or tweet (using twitterlink), the Mail app showed no emails (since it has to be opened to update). This kept the phone usage to a minimum. Feedtwit sent me mentions as text messages.

I checked and processed emails once a day in the evening while charging it. Life was uninterrupted.

Technology sometimes makes us do more things. We should hack technology to make life simpler. I am not going to change the manual email update setting. Life is more peaceful this way.

minimalist life

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