Hramblings: Time piece disarmament

I love watches and timepieces of all types. I have a large collection of watches some fancy and some humble. For most of my life, I've had a watch on my wrist for all of my waking hours. I always know what time it is. Over the last two years, I've been experimenting with spending some amount of time "off the watch".

One of the first steps was coming to terms with being "Off Duty". This is a concept from the book Turn It Off. A second step was tuning into natural rhythms of nature: Sunrise, sunset, phases of the moon, tides, seasons, hunger etc.

I try to schedule time when I'm off the clock into each week. For example, my wife is a member of a bookclub and also has an exercise class in the evenings. On those nights, I schedule solitude time at home. When I arrive after work, I take off my watch and turn off my phone. I've gone so far as to put black tape over the display on the VCR in the media room as well. In this way I have a block of time that isn't subdivided.

Slowly, I'm trying to make wearing a watch or carrying my cellphone an exception rather than the norm. When I was on vacation for example, I only carried a timepiece when I had an appointment during part of the day. After the appointment, I went back off the clock so long as I had a natural barrier between me and my next scheduled item. For example, if I know I have a 10:00am appointment the next day, there's no need to wear a watch the day before. I know I'm going to sleep between now and the appointment. I just set my alarm clock accordingly.