Primal Experiment: Intentional Power Outage
A few months back, I linked to an article about a guy who experienced an unexpected benefit after Hurricane Irene knocked out his power for several days: he started sleeping much, much better. Instead of staying up late on the computer or with the TV blaring and going to bed at the usual 11:30 or midnight, he found himself yawning around 9 PM and getting to bed at 10. It was the best sleep of his life, and even better – the effects persisted even after the power returned. He had effectively entrained his circadian rhythm to the natural cycle of light and dark. This is basic stuff to you guys, but bear with me.
Just last week, a reader named Melissa emailed me with a similar story. She lost power for three and a half days after a Connecticut snowstorm took out power all across the state. Instead of panicking, she rolled with it. Instead of freaking out over the fact that there were sub-freezing temperatures, no heat, and no water (it froze), she made a fun snowball fight out of a snowstorm. She took it as an opportunity to get “unexpectedly extra-Primal.” I like it. I remember those New England winters, and I can’t imagine a better way to deal with them than to accept the challenge and make the best of it.
That gave me an idea – why wait for the grid to fail to have all that fun? Why not willingly experience all that good stuff without the threat of cannibal hordes and Xbox-live starved teens beating down your door?
So, now, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to spend a weekend – two full nights, minimum – living under a self-imposed intentional power outage. Even if you live in a sunny climate and even if you’ve got a generator hooked up for worst-case scenarios, I want you to completely disconnect from electricity. We’re going to find out what it really feels like to turn off and drop out.
That means:
- No computers, smartphones, or Internet.
- No e-book readers.
- No TV or radio.
- No lightbulbs or flashlights.
- Thus, you should be:
- Stocking up on candles.
- Splitting wood for the fireplace (if you have one and it’s cold enough to warrant it).
- Grabbing some good books (no Nooks or Kindles, though).
- Bringing out the board games.
To give you an idea of what to expect, check out exactly how Melissa got more Primal (in her own words) going without power:
- No hot water, so I was a little more “natural” smelling than usual!
- I mostly lived off of the rest of my salad greens, tuna with olive oil and dried tomatoes. Also a filling little mixture of coconut milk and whey powder. A bit of beef jerky and almonds, too.
- With very limited artificial light, my sleep rhythms seem more natural. Sleep around 8:30 or 9 pm (instead of my usual midnight), wake up when it starts to get light.
- A mile+ each way trek through the snow to get to a Target I heard was open so I could stock up on tuna and the like. Haul it all home in a bag over my shoulder.
- During the day, when it was nice and sunny, spent more time outdoors to take advantage.
- Nice leisure time spent with the cat, knitting and reading (what else but The Primal Blueprint!).
All that in a little over three days.
To those I would add a few other things it’ll allow (force) you to do:
Unwind, Completely and Utterly
It’s one thing to tell yourself, “Don’t check your email after 7 PM” and have your laptop staring at you all night, power light winking seductively. You can still hop on and log in. There’s nothing stopping you but your own will. It’s another thing to be physically unable to check your email. When the power is out, you can’t use electricity. You physically cannot access email (until the battery dies, at least), and this makes a huge difference. I’ve promised myself that I wouldn’t go online after dark only to “just sneak one last peek” before bed. Sometimes it’s good to remove temptation entirely so that you have no choice but to unwind. Removing electricity will remove temptation.
Spend Quality Time with Loved Ones
I mean really spend quality time with loved ones. Not sitting on the couch watching TV with the gang. Not Skype-ing each other from separate rooms in the same house. I’m talking look each other in the eye and exchanging words, telling jokes, playing board or card games, telling stories, laughing about old times, as well as engaging in more intimate pastimes characterized by unintelligible vocalizations. Face time, not FaceTime.
Disconnect from Electronic Media
We’ve gone over this one before, but now the rubber hits the road. This one’s for the political junkies who need their fix every hour on the hour, the Primal blogosphere addicts fastidiously checking every blog for new comments, the gamers, the chronic email/Twitter/Facebook checkers. Basically, it’s for everyone. And it will hurt, at first. You might get itchy, cranky, irritable. You’ll probably flip open your powerless laptop and check your dead phone a few times before you realize that THE POWER IS OUT AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT SOMEONE ON THE INTERNET IS SAYING ABOUT SOMETHING. That’s okay, though. Take several slow, deep breaths and settle in for the long (2-day) haul. It’s going to be okay. The benefits are many, of course, with the main objective being the lack of blue light messing with your circadian rhythm, but what about the simple fact that you will be forced to be in the moment without the crutch of electronic media? It’s hard, and a lack of electronic stimulation initially manifests as boredom and restlessness, but that will pass. Trust me.
Disconnect from All Media After Dark
Unless you go overboard with the candles, you’ll be hard-pressed to stay up late reading. Candlelight is still dim and still promotes sleep (by allowing melatonin secretion), and I dare you to read longer than an hour by candlelight. You might be able to; I can’t. I get too sleepy too fast. This is a good thing, I think. At the very least, it’s worth trying out for a couple days, if only to explore the inner workings of your own mind left to its own devices. We don’t get that very often, do we? A total lack of external stimulation is hard to come by these days. Whenever I go camping, I always bring a book with visions of hunkering down in the tent after dark, except it never happens. The book stays unopened, and I lie there amidst the awesome stillness of it all with my own thoughts. I bet you’ll have the same experience. Just don’t freak out, because the mind can be a pretty interesting, unnerving place!
Get Outside and Play
You know what I did when I was a kid and there was nothing good on TV and computers filled up entire rooms? I went outside and played. Without electricity to fall back on for entertainment, I bet you’ll get the hankering to go outside and scrounge up some of your own. There’s a ton of fun stuff outside (not to mention sacred stuff, too), much of which I’ve talked about before, but it takes effort. And when you can access millions of songs, movies, TV shows, books, and blogs with the touch of a few keys, effort-based entertainment starts looking like, well, too much effort. No more. Without electricity, all you’ve got is the entire world around you. A world you can taste, smell, grab, and climb. So get out there and do it! I mean, what else is there?
This is your chance to finally try out all the “other stuff” we write about around here. The blue light avoidance, the sleep cycle entrainment, the divestment from the tyranny of the LED, the socializing, the quietude, the time alone with one’s thoughts, the forest bathing – this is the time to actually do this stuff, rather than read about it and think to yourself, “Oh, that sounds interesting.” Now you actually have to do it.
A few tips:
- Don’t actually turn off power to your entire house. You might need it in an emergency, and I don’t think letting your refrigerated and frozen food spoil in the name of purity is worth it. Just turn off the laptop, the phone, the lights, and disconnect all elective electronics.
- Make sure your schedule is clear. Finish all your work and let people know that you’re going to be out of commission (and that they’re free to come visit in person!).
- Go longer if you can. Two days should be the minimum, but go for three or even four if you can manage it.
I love electricity and modern technology, and I appreciate all the luxuries it allows. But it’s also something I take for granted. It’s something I’ve come to expect as a given, an essential aspect of life that I give little thought to, like the presence of oxygen and the influence of gravity on everyday life. I think that’s probably true for most of us reading this post. This experiment, I think, will make that clearer than ever.
Once you’ve successfully completed your intentional power outage weekend, report back with your findings. Did you enjoy it? Was it more restful? Stressful? Was it unbearable? If so, why? Was it a nice surprise? How so? What did you learn? Did you sleep better? Is this something you’ll try to work into your daily life from now on, or was it a nice vacation but not anything you’d care to repeat? Give it an honest shot and let us know how it went!
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
Let’s see if anyone tries to combine this experience with an intermittent fast.
Yes – that would definitely be my approach. Ideal timing really – although without all the electronic media around to ‘distract’ oneself maybe more time can be spent in the kitchen (without electric appliances of course) creating some essential raw primal recipes!
I’m doing this soon. I loved power outages when I was a kid, and still do to this day.
Need candles!
I have been primal for 6 years. I lost power for 6 days and was not affected at all. I go to bed around dark, and get up after eight solid hours anyway. I don’t watch TV, but read instead. I usually grill my food on the BBQ year round. All in all, I was happy to see that I was more primal than I thought. I did pitty watching the folks who are late nighters, it was thier worst nightmare.
We just experienced 9 days of this experiment first hand, due to the snowstorm in CT. (30% of my town still does not have power, 11 days later)
While it was nice to bond as a family and forage for food easily cooked and not easily spoiled, the energy needed for the body to not experience hypothermia in an unheated house made us all truly uncomfortable.
Being forced to live in darkness rather than than choosing to was also very disconcerting. We DID go to sleep much earlier and wake earlier or at the same time, but the rest we got was not as restorative since we were so cold.
Having no internet connection was both good and awful, as it left us terribly unconnected to the world – nobody’s phones worked and for many, email and Facebook is the only way we communicate with one another. Neighbors were outside spending time clearing trees and branches, but we usually see our neighbors.
Eating became a challenge as well, particularly feeding my children. No ready access to perishable food or ability to cook other than the grill makes for hungry and impatient family members. Eating out happened way more than we’d have liked (though I’m thrilled to report I ate no grains at all). The fact that the storm hit the night before my birthday and I woke up to a birthday gift of a tree having crushed my car is another matter altogether…
Ha! I told my kids we were going to do this, this past summer while reading little house on the prarie books! (We homeschool). Never got around to it though… now I want to do it again… we will try this… maybe as a way of preparing for the holidays and spending good family time together! And catch up on sleep (just quit working nights after 3 years)
I agree with most of that with the exception of an eInk Kindle. I would include the Nook and the Kindle Fire in the power off, but my version is not one of the backlit devices and I see no difference between using it and reading an actual book. It also wouldn’t be difficult to power it during a real outage as it uses so little juice and can be charged by a solar charger even in the low-light of winter.
Definitely need to turn the other electronics off after dark though, but it hasn’t been easy for me to do when the only chance I get to read, watch TV, browse the web, play my PS3, or even do dishes is after the wee one is in bed.
I do this very same thing several times a year, but at my buddy’s place in the country. They don’t have any running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing at their cabin. It’s pretty bare bones, and it’s pretty fantastic.
Their is nothing like being somewhere where you can experience total silence and darkness. It’s very rejuvenating,
“Not Skype-ing each other from separate rooms in the same house.”
Is this a joke or do people really do this?
Unfortunately, since I am a busy graduate student who needs to write papers and read books all day, I couldn’t possible participate. Plus I live in a non primal household.
that’s why I love camping
Nothing like sitting by a fire at night..and hanging with friends.. I wish summer was all year.
Hi all, I’m actually the Melissa featured! We lost power on Saturday, Oct 29, and got it back Wednesday, November 2. Would you believe that some people here in CT STILL do not have their power back? It’s crazy! I think it was worse at first because we were pretty unprepared for it, and then we lost cell reception to boot. Once I got into survival mode I got into a good routine. Not being able to cook anything was a pain at first, but totally manageable. Try it! At least if you are doing this on your own terms, you can decide when you’ve had enough (instead of the power company deciding that for you!)
Well, the first 3 days of Storm Alfred and no lights was cool. The 8pm bed time was good for me. And, I got to the point where a 45 degree bedroom was warm in the AM. But, when I had to toss my refrigerated / frozen food it was a bummer. The final straw was when I woke up to my 4 y/o clinging to me like glue for warmth. We had to bail out to my ‘rents for heat then. BUT, it did remind me that I don’t NEED the lights, and the TV, and the PC.
Chris
That would be challenging…but a fun experiment.
This would be a cool experiment, and I don’t think it would be a challenge for myself so much as for my fiancee. I love candlelight and reading books and spending time outside and sleeping. But he’s a ‘come home from work and watch tv for 5 hours then go to bed’ kind of guy.
*sigh* At least he likes meat and vegetables…
Sounds like fun to me, it would be tough to get my wife and kids to commit.
I live in Alaska, and we’re starting winter so there’s not much sunlight (and I have school, so I miss most of it). Is candlelight much better than fluorescent bulbs? Or should I lie, cheat, and steal to get my dose of natural sunlight?
Actually I lived it, too. I was without power for about 6 days after Irene, and 8 days after the snow thing just now. The Irene thing was fine — I hiked around the neighborhood. The snow thing was more problematic as it got dark faster at this time of year, and it got dark well before I wanted to sleep. I like to read prior to sleeping, so I did get to read by lantern-light, but after a few days, I admit to boredom with this. At any rate: I did learn to appreciate the benefits of electricity. And of simplifying. And, I did save most of my food.
Why I couldn’t hike at night in the dark: It would be a death sentence, considering how people drive around here.
Temps dropped down to the upper 40′s here. I have a really good sleeping bag and I remained toasty in it.
I did have great fun with the grill. Took half days from work, so I could grill with some daylight.
When cyclone yasi came through north Queensland (Australia) we lost power for 9 days! I really did have to learn that social medias weren’t all they cracked up to be- and this has comefor me at the perfect time I’m getting rid of social media (will keep skype as ilive thousands of kms away from family ) and am learning that it’s not the end of the world!
We have a summer cabin (over 100 years old) that does have some electricity and water supplied by a truck every spring. I miss spending time there as I’m on Vancouver Island summers now. Still, on VI the grid is tenuous and we usually spend some Primal time when the electricity goes out — for an hour, a day or longer. Surprise Primal is often the best kind.
oh woe is me. If only a college student could do this. Maybe over vaca
A few years ago we had a really bad ice storm and the power was out for over two weeks. After four days the phone and water also went out. It was January in South Dakota, so it was chilly. I also had the best sleep of my life! At about 8-9 pm I was ready to sack out. I didn’t really mind the power and phone being out, but I did miss the water. Boiling drinking water and taking a sponge bath in a freezing room was no fun.
Funnily enough, we had a power cut yesterday (5 hours long, so not too bad), but we’re now entering the realms of power cut weather. I am lucky – my house is already heated with wood and coal, I have a coal-fired Aga (range cooker), so I never really have to worry about power cuts. Oh, and my television broke yesterday, too! So this post is rather timely. I think, though, that we’ll get enough practice over the winter if last year was anything to go by. 10 days was our record last year ….
I lived like that for about 2 years of my life back when I was in Russia. I stayed in a small village in Georgia ( Russian Georgia ) with my grandma and we didn’t have electricity, and we only had cold water available 1 hour a day ( the government only allowed 1 hour a day ). We used those kerasine lamps ( the one that looks like a candle ) and we heated our house with one of those large cement stoves where you place wood to burn it. It was a very simple life but everyone in that village seemed to survive just fine.
We didn’t even had bathroom inside of our house, it was outside just like our homemade shower box with a bucket of rain water, which was heated by sunlight ( you can call it primal living
), but my grandma calls it surviving.
My grandma still lives in that village, exactly the same way, she doesn’t see a point in living a different life.
I just want to point out that if the circadian rhythm is a matter of light and dark, then it’s unfair to lump ereaders in with computers and television–baby, bathwater, etc. The majority of ereaders have no built in light source, so it’s really no different than reading a book except that (for me) there’s no eyestrain involved trying to read those tiny fonts.
I think this is a cool idea, and I do try to limit my screen time in the evenings before bed and it’s helped me a lot. However, we’re about to move and go off-grid, so I’m planning to enjoy my electricity while I’ve got easy access to it.
I guess this would be fun for people who don’t live in New England. I live in New Hampshire. We lose power all the time, last week I went without power for 4 days and let me tell you, that was no picnic. I had to get up freezing, go to the gym and take a freezing shower (the gym ran out of hot water because soo many people were showering. You don’t want to go outside in the snow because once you come back in guess what? Your still freezing!! Had to throw away all of my food in the fridge and freeze. Sorry guys, no power is no fun.
Years ago we lost power for a week because of an ice storm. I never slept better in my life. At first I thought it was because we were sleeping in absolute darkness. That was a factor, but after the power was back my sleep became disturbed again even though I went to great lengths to darken our room. I am convinced that noise is another factor. I think the sounds of the refrigerator, water heater, etc. cause me to not sleep as well as I could. I would love to wear ear plugs to see if that would make a difference, but don’t dare to do it because I’m afraid I wouldn’t hear if something is wrong in the house. I don’t think we are even aware how much noise we are surrounded by all the time.
When I lived in Colorado last year, my roommate and I went down to the Springs to visit his parents. They live in Black Forest, which is a pretty rural area (dirt roads, wood stoves, in other words HEAVEN). We were snowed in for 3 days while we were there, and although I was a bit restless for the first couple hours, I found all sorts of things to do: I read more than 100 pages of a book, helped chop firewood, cleaned the guest house we were staying in, baked bread (this was in my pre-Primal days), shoveled snow out of the driveway, had snowball fights… I can honestly say it was those 3 days without electricity and artificial stimulation that made me fall in love with Colorado. I dream of a life of having the luxury of remaining connected to “civilization” but not drowning in the middle of it. If I didn’t live under my mother’s roof, I’d do this every night. Awesome post Mark, thanks! =)
It feels great to disconnect from all the conveniences. I do it with my friends during summers, when we bike out of town into the “wild”.
Biking with no lights through a forest is liberating.
I’m doing it this weekend, and adding not driving my car, except for two appointments on Saturday.
I look forward to walking or biking everywhere to get my groceries, meet with friends, etc.
I have discussed this with my Grok and we decided to give it a try this weekend! Although the heater is staying on. I would not sleep well if it was below freezing in the house.