Get Outside: 5 Ways to Spend a Saturday Without Looking at a Screen

If your working week is spent moving between a laptop, phone and television, perhaps the best thing you can do on Saturday is go somewhere your Wi-Fi can’t follow you.

Think about how many hours you spend looking at screens during an average week. You start the morning checking your phone, spend much of the working day looking at a computer, glance at your phone whenever you have a spare minute and then finish the evening watching television while occasionally looking at your phone again.

It’s hardly surprising that by Saturday some of us feel as though our brains have had enough.

The answer doesn’t have to be a complicated digital detox involving locking your phone in a box and disappearing into the wilderness. Sometimes you just need an activity interesting enough that you forget to look at it.

So this weekend, get outside. Not because you need to achieve a step target or transform yourself into an outdoorsman, but because spending a few hours doing something completely different can feel bloody good after a week behind a desk.

Here are five places to start.

1. Go hiking somewhere you’ve never been

You don’t need to climb a mountain. Find a decent trail, country park, forest, coastal path or stretch of countryside and spend a couple of hours walking somewhere more interesting than your usual route around the neighbourhood.

Hiking works particularly well after a busy week because there isn’t much to manage. You have a route, somewhere you’re heading and whatever is immediately around you. Work problems can still pop into your head, of course, but they have to compete with finding the path, climbing the hill and deciding whether the view ahead is worth another 20 minutes of walking.

You can go with friends, your partner, the kids or entirely by yourself. Take some food, find somewhere good to stop halfway and don’t worry about how quickly you’re moving. This isn’t training. There is no personal best waiting at the end.

And if you’re heading somewhere remote, do the sensible stuff first: check the weather, take appropriate clothing and water, know your route and make sure somebody knows where you’re going.

Then put the phone away. The photos can wait until you reach the top.

2. Get on the water

Kayaking, canoeing and paddleboarding have one enormous advantage if you’re trying to get away from your phone: dropping an expensive smartphone into a lake is a fairly effective incentive to leave it alone.

Being on the water also feels completely different from an ordinary weekend at home. You’re concentrating on balance, direction and what’s happening around you, which leaves considerably less room for thinking about the email somebody sent at 4.57pm on Friday.

You don’t need to immediately buy equipment either. Plenty of places hire kayaks, canoes and paddleboards, and beginners can start somewhere calm with appropriate instruction and safety equipment. Choose an activity and location suited to your ability and conditions rather than deciding Saturday morning is the day you’re going to conquer the open sea.

Go with friends and it becomes a social day out. Go alone somewhere appropriate and you’ve got a few quiet hours where the only messages you’re likely to receive are from ducks.

Not a bad trade.

3. Get the bike out

There is a bicycle sitting unused in an extraordinary number of garages.

If yours is one of them, perhaps it’s time to find out whether the tyres still contain air.

Cycling is brilliant because it can be almost anything you want it to be. You can spend the morning on a serious road ride, find a mountain-bike trail, follow a quiet cycle route or simply ride somewhere for breakfast and come back again. You don’t need expensive equipment or a complicated training programme to enjoy being on a bike.

It also changes the way you experience somewhere familiar. Roads you’ve driven along hundreds of times look completely different when you’re moving more slowly and can actually see what’s around you.

If you haven’t ridden for years, start gently and choose somewhere safe rather than immediately joining a group of people dressed in Lycra who apparently regard Saturday morning as a stage of the Tour de France.

You can become that person later if you want.

For now, just ride the bike.

4. Actually do something with the garden

Gardening may not immediately sound like the most exciting suggestion on this list, particularly if your normal relationship with the garden involves occasionally looking through the window and thinking you really need to sort that out.

But working outside can be surprisingly absorbing.

Cut something back. Plant something. Build a raised bed. Grow herbs or vegetables. Sort out the area you’ve ignored for two years. Paint the fence. Create somewhere to sit. Put some music on and spend the afternoon making one small part of the garden better.

There is something satisfying about physical work that produces a visible result. Much of modern working life involves emails, conversations, spreadsheets and problems that aren’t necessarily finished at the end of the day. In the garden, you can spend three hours doing something and then stand back and actually see what you accomplished.

Just resist turning it into another enormous project that needs a spreadsheet, budget and completion deadline.

You’re gardening.

Nobody needs a project-management meeting about the tomatoes.

5. Cook outside

Cooking outside makes an ordinary meal feel like an event.

Get the barbecue out. Try cooking over fire. Make pizzas outside if you’ve got an oven. Invite some friends over, put some music on and spend an afternoon preparing food slowly rather than trying to get dinner on the table as quickly as possible.

Outdoor cooking is particularly good for switching off because it gives you something to concentrate on without feeling like work. You’re preparing food, managing the heat, talking to people and occasionally staring seriously at a piece of meat as though the entire success of the weekend depends upon it.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with becoming unnecessarily enthusiastic about barbecue. Learn how to smoke something properly. Experiment with marinades. Perfect your burgers. Spend six hours cooking something that could technically have been prepared in the oven in 45 minutes.

Efficiency is not the objective.

That’s rather the point.

Leave the phone in your pocket

You don’t have to completely abandon technology to enjoy being outside. Your phone is useful for directions, emergencies, photographs and finding somewhere good to eat afterwards.

The challenge is simply to stop automatically reaching for it every time there is a quiet moment.

Try an hour without checking anything. Leave it in your bag while you’re walking. Keep it somewhere safe while you’re kayaking. Don’t interrupt a conversation because you’ve noticed a notification. Take the photograph and resist immediately spending ten minutes choosing a filter and uploading it.

Not every experience needs to be documented while you’re still experiencing it.

There is something slightly wonderful about reaching the end of an afternoon and realising you haven’t thought about your inbox, social media or whatever everyone else has been doing for several hours.

Saturday doesn’t need to improve you

There is a tendency to turn almost every wellbeing activity into another form of self-improvement. Hiking becomes cardio. Cycling becomes performance data. Gardening becomes mindfulness. Outdoor cooking becomes nutrition.

Can we just have a Saturday?

Go hiking because the view is good. Kayak because being on the water is fun. Ride your bike because you haven’t done it for years. Grow tomatoes because tomatoes you grew yourself somehow taste approximately 40% better. Cook outside because standing around a barbecue with people you like is an excellent way to spend an afternoon.

You don’t need to emerge healthier, more productive or spiritually transformed.

The working week asks enough from you already.

Your screen will still be there when you get back

Phones are brilliant. Computers are useful. Television is entertaining. Nobody needs to throw any of them into the sea in pursuit of better wellbeing.

But sometimes we forget how much there is to do that doesn’t require one.

So when Saturday arrives, resist automatically spending the morning scrolling through what everybody else is doing with their weekend.

Find a trail. Get on the water. Pump up the bike tyres. Attack the garden. Light the barbecue.

Go and have a Saturday worth looking at yourself.

The screen will still be there when you get home.

Keep looking after you

Wellbeing looks different for everyone, and sometimes the most useful thing is simply finding the right information at the right time. Explore more from Daily Round with our dedicated Women’s Health, Men’s Wellbeing and Wellbeing for Leaders sections, or head to the Leaders Library for our latest book recommendations, ideas and inspiration for life in and outside work.

Or, if you’re ready to get back to what’s happening across the sector, catch up with today’s Daily News for the latest health and social care stories.