A Note on Why I Created The OFF Hours
I created The OFF Hours because I was looking for ways back into the real world.
Not away from life, and not away from everything digital. More than anything, I was looking for ways to live alongside the digital world with more intention.
I had started to notice how much of the day was being pulled through a screen. Messages, emails, banking, work, shopping, videos, updates, conversations, reminders, plans.
And everything useful, ordinary, necessary and distracting had begun to live in the same place.
The digital world is not separate from daily life anymore. It is woven into it. It helps us work, connect, organise, learn, buy, remember. The intention behind The OFF Hours was never to treat that world as the enemy, or to suggest that it should be erased.
The underlying aim looked for something quieter than the very busy world we live in today and in how we can live with it, without letting it take all of our attention?
The things
that helped me return
Before The OFF Hours became a product, it had years before began as a personal search for what helped me.
I had slowly started to find myself returning to activities that did not offer immediate validation, but gave me so much joy and with no judgement attached. Reading. Journaling. Workbooks. Knitting. Playing music. Gardening. Hiking. Spending time with animals. Being in nature.
I know these are no dramatic escapes and in the end that was the whole point. They were ordinary, physical things that helped me disconnect from the digital world and reconnect with my real one.
More importantly I was being able to focus my attention in different ways. Not the fast attention of checking, refreshing or responding. A slower attention. The kind that asks you to stay with one thing for longer than a few seconds. The kind that does not immediately reward you, but begins to build something steadier if you return to it often enough.
The quick fix of the digital world is easy to understand. It gives us something almost instantly: a message, an answer, a reaction, content, a distraction. But the longer-term effect of tactile, sensory, offline activities felt different. Less immediate, but more nourishing. Less stimulating, but more grounding.
The OFF Hours grew from wanting to understand that difference, and to create something that could help make space for it.
First, there was the idea
of analog time
At the beginning, I spent a long time thinking about what to call it and one of the first names I considered was The Analog Hours.
That name came from the desire to create a connection with a time before digital life became so influential and so dominant. Not because the past was better, or because technology had no place, but because analog experiences seemed to hold something the digital world often does not.
Texture. Slowness. Friction. Presence. The need to use the hands. The need to stay with one thing.
The name eventually became The OFF Hours because it felt broader, softer and more open. It held the idea of time away from constant input without making the brand only about nostalgia or opposition.
Noticing the absence of pause
I had already noticed, as many of us have, for many years that there seemed to be fewer moments where people were simply doing nothing. Fewer pauses. Fewer moments of staring, humming, waiting, daydreaming, thinking and letting the mind wander without immediately reaching for a device.
We often call those moments boredom, but I think they hold more than that. Boredom can be uncomfortable because it creates space. It removes the next input. It leaves us with one task, or no task, and asks us not to run immediately towards distraction.
That space used to arrive naturally in small ways: waiting in a queue, sitting on a train, eating alone, walking somewhere, arriving early, sitting outside, looking out of a window. Now, many of those moments are filled before they can become anything else.
And so the question began to bounce around in my mind, as I went through everyday life: What could stepping away, from constant input, look like? What could it feel like? As something practical, physical and possible.
A tool, not a solution
I did not intend to create a solution.
That felt too large, and too ambiguous. The way we live with the digital world is complex. No single product can solve that, and The OFF Hours did not want to work towards making that kind of promise.
What I wanted to create was a tool.
A guide. A helping hand. Something that could help interrupt the habit, question the pattern, or motivate someone to find something else to do instead of reaching automatically for the same source of input.
The OFF Hours was created for people who are already curious about intentional time offline, and for those who may not know where to begin.
It is for someone who feels that something in their attention has become scattered, but does not want to be told, and may also not believe that the solution is in eradicating the online. It is for someone who wants to read more, write more, notice more, or simply spend time in a way that feels less reactive.
The OFF Hours is not here to exclude people who are not already living slowly, journaling daily or taking beautiful offline weekends. It is here to sit alongside the person who is curious, tired, unsure, distracted, interested, hesitant, or simply looking for somewhere to start.
Why it had to be physical
From the beginning, I wanted The OFF Hours to create physical products. It felt true to what had helped me. Especially the hours I would spend reading or the pull I would feel to writing my thoughts down, all felt aligned with what I wanted The OFF Hours to offer.
The things that brought me back into myself were often tactile and sensory. Paper. Thread. Soil. Paint. Instruments. Books. The weight of an object in the hand. The feel of a page. The smell of the outside world after too much time indoors.
The sensory world has a powerful relationship with memory, emotion and attention. We are not only thinking beings. We are physical beings, and what we touch, see, hear and smell can shape how present we feel inside our own lives. And a printed object asks something different from us.
It does not ask to be charged. It does not need to be updated. It does not open another tab. It does not collapse into the same device where work, messages, shopping and distraction already live.
It gives the hands somewhere to go. It gives the eyes something still to rest on. It gives thought a slower surface. That is part of the purpose.
Why writing matters
Writing has always felt central to The OFF Hours because writing asks for attention and time. It asks you to stay with a thought long enough to form it. It asks you to choose words, cross things out, notice what feels true, and sometimes discover what you think only after you have begun writing. And in now way does this require any type of skill.
Writing by hand can feel especially different because it involves the body. The movement of the hand, the pressure on the page, the pace of the sentence, the decision to pause before continuing. The point is not that writing is easy, its that it gives your thoughts somewhere to go. Somewhere to settle in your physical world and in front of you. Not stuck in your mind.
For me, that was important. I did not want The OFF Hours to be something passive. I wanted it to invite interaction. A person using it would not simply consume an idea. They would have to meet it with their own attention, their own honesty and their own time.
That is where change can begin, not because a workbook changes someone, but because it creates a place where they can begin to notice what needs their attention.
The first release:
The 48-Hour Return
The 48-Hour Return is the first printed release from The OFF Hours.
It is a two-part reflection workbook set designed as a self-led 48-hour practice for intentional time offline. It includes Book I: Distance and Book II: Re-entry.
Book I: Distance is about creating movement between yourself and the constant push to consume, view, respond and keep going. It is about noticing what becomes visible when there is less input to react to.
Book II: Re-entry is about coming back with more care. It is about accepting what may have been discovered in the first part, then finding a way to live with the digital world while still creating time and attention for yourself.
The 48-Hour Return does not promise transformation. It does not intend to fix a life, solve a habit or prescribe one correct way to be offline. It is more like a helping hand.
A printed companion for a short period of distance and return. A way to begin questioning the pull of constant input without needing to have all the answers first.
Finding the people
who understand it
The 48-Hour Return is the first printed release from The OFF Hours.
It is a two-part reflection workbook set designed as a self-led 48-hour practice for intentional time offline. It includes Book I: Distance and Book II: Re-entry.
Book I: Distance is about creating movement between yourself and the constant push to consume, view, respond and keep going. It is about noticing what becomes visible when there is less input to react to.
Book II: Re-entry is about coming back with more care. It is about accepting what may have been discovered in the first part, then finding a way to live with the digital world while still creating time and attention for yourself.
The 48-Hour Return does not promise transformation. It does not intend to fix a life, solve a habit or prescribe one correct way to be offline. It is more like a helping hand.
A printed companion for a short period of distance and return. A way to begin questioning the pull of constant input without needing to have all the answers first.
A quieter beginning
This is why I created The OFF Hours.
Because I was trying to understand my own relationship with the digital world.
Because physical, sensory, offline activities helped me feel more present.
Because I wanted to create something that could help others begin their own version of that process.
Because I believe intentional time offline can be valuable without being extreme.
Because paper still has a place in how we think, pause, process and return.
The OFF Hours was created for the space between constant connection and complete disconnection. A place to step aside for a while. A place to question what has been pulling at your attention. A place to begin again with more care.
For those looking for that kind of beginning, The 48-Hour Return is the first invitation.
Explore The 48-Hour Return, a two-part printed reflection workbook for intentional time offline.
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