Everyday Systems: Podcast : Episode 93

Weekend Luddite 2025: The Rules, The Persona

Hi, this is Reinhard from Everyday Systems. Today I’m going to do another one of those review episodes, in which I give an updated re-presentation of an older system, as if I’d never talked about it before, but fortified with what I’ve learned from many additional years of practice.

Today: Weekend Luddite, a system for managing your relationship with technology. On the one hand it’s a precise set of rules for how to take a periodic, limited break from technology, but it’s also become for me an attitude toward technology in general, a kind of persona. I practice Weekend Luddite by doing (or rather, not doing) certain specific things at certain specific times, but then I also am a Weekend Luddite, in my being, in how I think about and respond to new technological developments. So it’s partly like the No S Diet, a bunch of rules, but also like Urban Ranger, an identity, an attitude. The persona part didn’t occur to me until years into practicing the rules part, but I think it may even be more important. Still, I don’t know if it could have come about without the rules seeping into me first. So that’s where I’ll start.

But before any kind of solution, what is the problem? In my first podcast on Weekend Luddite, back in 2006, I gave examples to describe it. They seem quaint now – and not just the devices. But today, my God, we all know this problem. If we know any problem, we know this one. So I’ll spare you an updated list of all the soon to be obsolete apps and devices that are sucking away all our time at this particular moment in history. We are, then and now, “are distracted by distraction from distraction” as T.S Eliot wrote back in 1936. It was newspapers and radio and God knows, the telegraph for T.S. Eliot, but the root problem was the same.

No other problem changes this fast. And yet, certain aspects remain constant. Novelty and its allure is itself a big part of the problem. The fact that the particulars are continually changing is an essential part of the difficulty but we can’t obsess too much over what each particular novelty is because soon enough it’ll be something else. We have to have a system that deals with the class as a whole rather than particular instances – and yet is still specific and clearly actionable. We need a system for dealing with the Unknown – with precision. Not so easy to to pull off\! But I think with Weekend Luddite we can.

So, Weekend Luddite. I assume you've heard the term "Luddite" before. Someone who is anti-technology. That’s how people typically use it today. But it has a specific historical origin. The original Luddites were early 19th century English textile workers who rose up and smashed the machines that were putting them out of work. I learned recently, and this may be of interest to fellow Shovelglovers, that the Luddites’ weapon of choice against the machines was the sledgehammer, or “the Great Enoch” as they called it. Enoch Taylor was a manufacturer who made both the machinery that the Luddites despised and the sledgehammers they used to destroy them. The Luddites apparently had a sense of humor along with their simmering rage and appreciated this irony. They had a saying:

“Enoch made them, and Enoch shall break them.”

We Weekend Luddites are a little more moderate than these original Luddites. We don't destroy machines, we just avoid them. And not all the time, just on weekends. And not all machines, but just the machines that are wasting our time. The original Luddites were about reclaiming work that was being stolen from them but we are about reclaiming true leisure.

What are we reclaiming true leisure from? From two things: from work and workiness seeping into our off time. And also from the other direction, we reclaim it from false leisure, the frazzled one more click, one more scroll, one more dopamine inducing ding of approval. I’ve learned that there are wonderful Latin terms for these three states: work is negotium (like negotiate) true leisure is otium, or focused calm. And false leisure is desidia, next door to laziness. It just so happens that these days, most negotium involves technology (email, slack, zoom) as does most desidia (video games, social media, video shorts). Otium can involve technology, but mostly it doesn’t. So big picture, we Weekend Ludddites are about reclaiming otium from negotium and desidia.

The rules for Weekend Luddite are very simple:

On weekends

between breakfast and dinner

Don’t use a computer

Except for certain whitelisted tasks

That’s the simplest formulation. And I’m noticing, just like the No-S diet, it’s only 14 words.

Let me go through each element, to give the justification, and clear up any ambiguities.

There are four elements:

1. on weekends

2. between breakfast and dinner

3. don’t use a computer

4. except for certain whitelisted tasks

First element: “On weekends.”

We concede that technology is mostly necessary and maybe even mostly good. Weekend Luddite is about taking a break, not putting an end to. Note that unlike many other Everyday Systems, I’m talking only about weekends here, just Saturdays and Sundays, not all S-days. Weekend Luddites can use technology without restrictions on non-weekend “special” days. I’m a big fan of using the S-day structure. I use it for many systems, the No-S Diet, Shovelglove, Glass ceiling. But I do not use it here. Weekends are all I can manage and weekends are enough. It’s not paltry. One inspiration for Weekend Luddite is the Sabbath. So if you think about it that way we’re doubling the Sabbath. That’s not nothing. Besides, the labor connection with the “folks who gave you the weekend” is a nice resonance for a labor inspired metaphor.

Second element: “between breakfast and dinner.” I’m not sure I ever imagined that I could go a full 48 hours without technology, the entire weekend, but I did think I could go a single day – a single 24 hours. But I was wrong. What I found I could do was to go the entire active part of the day, the part of the day when I am awake and potentially sociable, the most important part. And I could even do two of them. The boundaries of breakfast and dinner are very clear, but give some flexibility if necessary. You can have a late breakfast – but there’s some friction to keep you in line, like, your rumbling stomach, or your kids’ rumbling stomachs. Originally I’d tried “dawn” to “dusk” but that had a few problems. One, dawn to dusk changes throughout the year, and my technology needs and desires do not. Two, I’m sufficiently divorced from nature that I’d need an app to even tell me when dawn and dusk happen, which would defeat the whole purpose. And three, it’s too rigid. If I oversleep (this doesn’t really happen anymore, three kids have broken my ability to do this, but it’s a theoretical possibility) I might miss my morning tech window and then be tempted to cheat to make up for it. So breakfast and dinner. Those are the boundaries. I can do a quick digital world check before breakfast and a quick check after dinner to put me at peace so I can forget about it again. It’s clear, it’s flexible, and it builds on and supports another habit structure I value highly, regular meals.

Third element: Don’t use a computer.

“A computer.” What exactly is a computer? My fridge is a computer, nowadays. My fridge has a motherboard. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about distraction devices. Something with apps. Something you distract yourself with by yourself. A phone, a laptop, a tablet, a gaming console. Not all machines, just the ones that are wasting your time. And it’s not the same list of devices for all people. It’s only about the machines you in particular have a problem with.

Fourth element: except for certain whitelisted tasks. This is key to making Weekend Luddite doable, long term. I would love it if I could stick my phone and my laptop in a lockbox for 8 hours every day on the weekend, if I could just do without the devices at all. But it’s hard to be a functional adult in our society like that. I’ve got to communicate to coordinate activities for my kids. In ages past, you could have just told someone you would be somewhere the next day and show up, but no more, you’ve got to text reassurances every 5 minutes that you’ll actually be there and give and get thumbs up otherwise people get anxious. I’ve got to use GPS to drive to places. In ye olden days I could have just pulled out a map but I’m not even sure if they make printed maps anymore. And I’d like to listen to music and audiobooks while I’m doing this, but my car no longer has a cassette player. All these things were formerly practical without digital devices but aren’t really today anymore unless you want to be some kind of retro stunt man with vintage equipment irritatingly making a point of it to everyone.

But the exceptions prove the rule – or at least, they can. We need the exceptions to buttress the rule by making them as few and clear and tightly defined as possible. That’s where the whitelist comes in. I used to whitelist by specific apps but that got too exhausting because they are constantly changing and because sometimes a potentially problematic app can have an innocent or necessary use. Whitelisting by activities, by what I do with those apps, is simpler, and results in a much shorter, more future-proof list.

I whitelist approved activities rather than blacklist unapproved activities because the blacklist would go on forever and I’d have to update it every day as the geniuses in silicon valley come up with a new distraction technology. With a whitelist, I can keep it short, and ignore new developments unless I think they’re actually beneficial on a weekend and worth approving. By default, everything is blacklisted.

There are seven items on my current whitelist.

1. Listen to music and audiobooks and podcasts.

2. Watch a movie or a show (not random clips and shorts\!) with another person.

3. Orient myself with GPS and maps. I stick fitness apps in this category too because they track movement and distance and I want to encourage myself to move and run.

4. Communicate about immediate social activities. This is the most dangerous whitelisted activity. The one that could easily tip over into abuse if I am not careful. Mostly this involves text messages for me. I don’t check email during Weekend Luddite time unless I’m expecting something specific and I don’t even have social media apps on my phone.

5. Shop and cook. This can involve the limited use of several otherwise prohibited apps. I use google docs for shopping lists and recipes. If I have to look up a recipe on the web, I’ll allow myself to do this. I’ll even invite ChatGPT’s input (I love taking pictures of fruit and asking it to tell me how many days till optimal ripeness, or a shelf of vinegars and asking which is most like the one I was looking for but couldn’t find).

6. Study-review using flash card and language learning apps. Back in the day, I would have been flicking index cards around. So I allow myself this. But online research for new study material is emphatically not allowed because then I’d be off in never never land. This exception is for review only.

7. Record audio memos. I still use a dedicated voice recorder device for this.

So 1\. Listen, 2\. Watch, 3\. Orient, 4\. Communicate, 5\. Shop and cook, 6\. study/review 7\. Record.

This is not exactly Amish level tech deprivation. But it’s a real limit, it’s clear, and it excludes the worst while keeping me functional.

As I mentioned, I don’t explicitly blacklist the prohibited bad stuff because there is too much and I’d have to spend my entire life updating it. But here are a few notable categories, broad buckets of stuff I really don’t want to be doing. When I’m considering a new whitelist element or revision, these are the criteria I keep in mind. There are just four.

1. Aimlessly browsing the web or rather being pulled along by the next algorithmically suggested distraction. One more click, one more swipe, one more scroll. Because you might not have an aim, but someone else sure does. “Not all who wander are lost”, but online, we are all suckers. In the library world, we used to talk about serendipity, about how lovely it can be to discover some book you hadn’t even been aware you were looking for because you bump into it in the stacks. Unfortunately this doesn’t translate to the digital world of fake serendipity.

2. Work. And by work I include side hustles like Everyday Systems. Work is fine and necessary during the week, but not on weekends. Building on the labor metaphor of Weekend Luddite, I think of weekend work as crossing the picket line. I don’t want to be a scab. I don’t want to be making my fellow workers stress out and look bad and feel like they too should be neglecting their kids to get more work done.

3. Ersatz socialization. Checking email or social media, which usually involves envying or feeling embarrassed for people I barely know. Thank god I still have real people with whom I can socialize. I should double down on that instead.

4. News. Bad shit is happening somewhere. It is. It’s bad. Most of it is profoundly unfashionable and I wouldn’t be concerned about it in any case because it’s not even being covered. I should steadily and compassionately help to the extent that I can and but I’m not helping anyone by working myself into a frenzy about it.

Where do AI chatbots fall in all this? Well, like email and google docs, they are mostly excluded, except when in support of a whitelisted activity. I can’t just fire up ChatGPT to ask it questions about one more random thing. I can’t use it as an ersatz conversation partner to practice my German in advanced voice mode. These are fine during the week, and I do plenty, but on the weekends it’s time for a break.

That’s Weekend Luddite, the rules. If you want to practice it yourself, start by coming up with your own personalized whitelist. If you’re stumped, use mine to get started, but I’m guessing you’ll find you want to tweak it. It’s OK if it starts really short. It’s better than way. Then you can add activities as you bump up against them.

Every once in a while, I have to violate Weekend Luddite, do something prohibited not covered by any of the standard exceptions. It’s rare, but it happens. Like I have to do my taxes shortly. That will likely involve a violation or maybe even a whole weekend of violations. Or sometimes there’s some genuine emergency at work. Or college applications for the kids. For such rare cases, I don’t try to think of another categorical exception to legitimate them. They’re rare, and I want to keep my whitelist short and simple. So I’ll just mark the violation in my personal punch card and lifelong and move on. It’s actually helpful to experience and acknowledge a violation every now and then because it reminds me with a little sting of pain where the boundaries are.

What about Weekend Luddite, the Persona? I said it was even more important than the rules, and here we are, most of the way through this episode, and I haven’t said anything about it yet. Well I have said a fair bit over the years in various technology related episodes, though I didn’t use the term. In particular, I’m thinking of the episodes: Right Relationship with Robots, Apps for Mentats, My Friend, ChatGPT, and (most recently) ProPro. These were all coming from the Weekend Luddite persona. It’s taking this idea that technology is a good, but a dangerous good, and an ever-changing one, that has to be both thoughtfully embraced and systematically limited, and building your relationship with it around that guiding principle. There are many ways to do this. And they’ll have to keep evolving. The Weekend Luddite rules are just one such set of rules. You’ll probably need several. I certainly do. Most recently my ProPro online news diet. The Weekend Luddite Persona embraces them all, and reminds me to be on the lookout for more when necessary.

We Weekend Luddites are neither technophobes and nor technophiles. Neither are we just some halfway, tepid compromise between them. We aren’t at the midpoint. Or maybe we are, but also at a right angle to them both, in a totally different direction. As with Urban Ranger, this is a persona to get excited about. Remember this is extreme moderation, we are the spiritual inheritors of “The Great Enoch.”

Both the Weekend Luddite rules and the persona, as I’ve just described them, are very self-directed. What about other people? What about, especially, one’s kids? The screentime wars, and all that? The culture wars are nothing to the screentime wars, for people with kids.

This, alas, is where we start to run into the limits of self\-help. And I am acutely conscious that the poor little self is as far as my special mandate as a part-time, hobbyist internet self-help guru extend… But I will say a few words, since, as a parent, I have had to think about this issue, special mandate or no. Just don’t take my utterances with the usual reverence you may attach to them.

I don’t think any parent in the world is completely happy with how they are doing on this front. Either the kids are glued to the screen or they hate our guts for preventing them or usually both. We fight and we fuss and we lay down the law and they’re still stuck to the screen most of the time. I too am not completely happy. But I do think some of the things my wife and I have been doing have been helpful. There are certainly things we could be doing to make it a lot worse.

The important first thing is to recognize your limitations. As strugglers with mere self-help, we, dear listeners, know all too well how hard it is to get one’s own self under control, never mind others. And even if we did have the same level of control over someone else, would that even be a good thing? So impossible and bad, that is our starting point.

But that opens up a window to something we can do, maybe, or rather, productively not do. As I’ve learned both from brutal personal experience and (rather belatedly) from the teachings of Alfred Adler, if there is a general rule for successful interpersonal relationships it is: let other people be other people. Give them breathing room. Give them love and interest and attention and support, but from an appropriate distance. On some fundamental level, you have to recognize, and show them that you recognize, that their problems are theirs to solve, that they own them. You can help around the edges, maybe, (you can certainly get over involved and mess things up even worse for them), but the most important thing you can do for them is let them know that you respect their right to their problems. “Separation of tasks” is the lovely Adlerian term for this.

The second thing you can do, or rather be, is to provide a good or at least not terrible example. And with Weekend Luddite I’m doing that. No one else in my family practices the Weekend Luddite rules, but because I do, it has an impact on my family. The “good example” part per se may be less important than the fact that because I am being a good example, I am offline and around and available for a lot more non-screen activities. So you get a two for one deal with this approach: good example and offline partner rolled into one. You invite with your good example.

It helps your family kind of like the way the No S Diet helps your family (especially if you’re the one cooking) because hey, meals are happening, the kids could continue permasnacking all day long, but here’s this nice meal that dad has prepared and it’s probably going to be tasty and it will be nice to come together. Maybe they’ll prefer that. At least sometimes. You’re not foisting rules on anyone, but you’re building an environment that encourages better habits.

At some point, though, you’re going to have to actively do something, rather than merely not do and be, as wonderfully zen and conveniently evasive as that all sounds. At some point the law must be laid down. Those cunning devices the Dopamine Drug Lords of Silicon Valley keep dreaming up are too much for any kid to resist without some parentally supported structure. But again: the not doing, and the mere being, as I’ve just described, are the foundation.

So yes, set the friggin limits on the parental controls (and thank God for AI because otherwise who would ever be able to figure them out\!). Hold out as long as possible on getting them each next horrible device that “EVERYONE” at their school already has, keep the blinkenscreens out of the bedroom, discourage them from using social media for as long as possible. But do all these things from a position of modeling a good relationship with technology yourself, so you have some credibility, so you’re not a total hypocrite. And just as important, whatever moral authority you manage to scrounge together notwithstanding, let the kids know that at the end of the day this is their problem rather than yours. Because however much of a righteous hardass you might be, you do not have sufficient authority of any kind to prevent them from doing many if not all of these things if they do not take ownership. You can bully them into hiding these behaviors and wanting to do them even more, but you can’t actually stop them unless, fundamentally, it’s their decision. You are not imposing rules on them, you are supporting them with structures, that hopefully, after some negotiation and renegotiation, they accept and own.

Well, that’s all I have to say for now on Weekend Luddite, the Rules, the Persona, and (bonus) the InterPersona. I hope you found something useful or interesting in here and that I haven’t ventured too far beyond what I have any right to talk about. May you enjoy true Otium and the Great Enoch be with you. Thanks for listening.

By Reinhard Engels