While many people often worry about feeling FOMO, Google’s executive productivity advisor, Laura Mae Martin, is encouraging more people to feel JOMO — the joy of missing out.
“The idea is that sometimes we are actually even happier when we miss that email, text, podcast, or programs we didn’t really want to follow through on,” Martin said in her book, “Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing.”
For Martin, whose job is helping Google’s top leaders achieve maximum productivity, she began practicing JOMO via a weekly tradition she first started with her husband.
Every Tuesday, they would put away their devices at night and instead do other activities and hobbies like board games and spending time outdoors.
“Those Tuesdays ended up being some of our favorite nights,” she said.
Martin said those unplugged hours are crucial to recharge your brain, which ultimately leads to more productivity in the long term. And that mental “quiet time” has been getting shorter and shorter.
According to DataReportal’s 2024 Digital Global Overview Report, an annual publication on worldwide digital trends, internet users in the US spend an average of 7 hours and 3 minutes daily on any device. Increased screen time has also been linked to potential vision damage and poorer mental health.
Martin’s personal success with the challenge inspired her to bring the tradition to the Google offices. However, asking tech bros to stay away from their tech — even for just a night — required a strategic introduction.
“I had to Swiss-cheese it and decided to focus on a manageable goal, like turning off the phone for a few hours,” she said.
Tuesday was also another calculated choice. Martin said she deliberately named her challenge with snappy alliteration and clear direction.
“Pick one night a week is so much less powerful than No-Tech Tuesday,” she said. “It’s catchy; it gives direction, rhythm, and structure.”
Finally, Martin implemented the challenge in January, since starting a new initiative may “feel more natural” at the beginning of the year rather than a random month. She said people are “willing to make a bigger change since it’s the start of something new.”
And Googlers were very willing. For the past five years, Martin said over 2,500 people have accepted the challenge annually.
“Almost all the feedback I hear is that it’s hard at first — but worth it in the end,” she said.
Participants reported sleeping much better at night, finding themselves more energetic the next day, and having time for creative hobbies as well as “richer human connections that wouldn’t have happened when technology was present.”
Others said they were surprised by the number of times they checked their phones and how much their families loved and even joined in their unplugged evenings, Martin wrote.
“Unexpectedly my kids love it. I realized the main reason they are on their devices in the evenings is because I’m on mine,” one participant said, according to Martin. “I sat and did a puzzle with my 13-year-old son and we had a meaningful conversation, which can be rare these days.”
She wrote that another participant said they were able to solve a work issue because of the challenge. After their no-tech Tuesday alarm went off, they paused on the problem rather than continue to spend hours on it like they typically would.
“I woke up Wednesday morning and thought of the best solution,” they said, according to the Google advisor. “I’m convinced it was because I let my brain rest.”
At the end of the challenge, Martin said that 97.2% of participants reported feeling that no-tech Tuesday in some way positively impacted their work performance and/or stress level, and 92% said they planned to continue the challenge.
“Some participants have been doing the challenge for five years and have kept up with every single Tuesday night since I first held it,” Martin said.
If a full evening digital detox sounds like too large of a commitment, Martin suggests taking smaller steps, like doing one thing before checking your phone in the morning or finding short windows of time without your phone, like during a walk or while eating lunch.
“Digital detoxing — even just that one evening each week — creates the mental space we need to thrive in our work and in our lives,” she said.
