Before EG’s Lucy Alderson agreed to stay offline for an entire working day as part of WiredScore’s Unplugged Challenge, she had never picked up an A-Z map in her life. Find out how she and 11 other industry professionals fared as they, quite literally, navigated their way through a completely internet-free day
The urges start just two minutes after I wake up.
With the kettle boiling for my morning brew, I reach into my pocket, automatically searching for my phone to read the morning news. I quickly remember, however, that it would be another 10 hours before I can use the internet.
I stare longingly at the dark, blank screen and find myself counting the minutes until I can finally get a hit of Twitter or Spotify. The thought of all the emails I would be missing, building up in my inbox, was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat.
It’s safe to say that I found WiredScore’s Unplugged Challenge 2020 quite difficult. But I wasn’t alone.
Eleven real estate and proptech heavyweights were also asked to go cold turkey and abstain from any internet access from the moment they woke up on Wednesday 12 February until 5pm the same day.
From poring over a London A-Z – something I have never used in my life before – to flicking through the Metro to keep up with the news, I quickly find out how difficult it is to unplug from the virtual and step into reality.
“Does Bluetooth use the internet?” I ask my boyfriend before heading out of the front door.
“I don’t know – I’ll check for you,” he says, whipping out his phone and tapping the query into Google.
After safely wrestling his phone from him, explaining that it would break WiredScore’s rules for the day if he googled this on my behalf, I make my way to the Tube, content in the knowledge that I had successfully navigated through my first challenging interaction in the world sans internet.
Usually, I would fire up Twitter to scroll through the latest headlines on my commute to work, listening to some music or a podcast while doing so. Flicking through social media on my phone obviously isn’t an option, and so (still unsure if I am safe to use Bluetooth) I pick up the Metro to browse the latest news. A story about a woman bludgeoning her neighbour to death over an unkempt garden is enough to completely depress me, so I give up on my early-morning news hit altogether.
Arriving at work, I settle down for the day. Some advance planning means I am focusing on feature write-ups, but every time I need to check a quick fact or confirm a detail I find myself at a loss. No internet means no fact checking. More work for my editor, who assures me it is worth it just to watch me struggle through my morning. At 12pm I decide to pick up the phone to call CBRE senior director Nick Wright, a fellow “unplugger”, to see how he was doing.
Wright has a lot of face-to-face meetings planned over the course of the day, so being off the internet shouldn’t be too detrimental for him in terms of his ability to do his job, he says. But his day-to-day routine has been disrupted – especially his morning timekeeping.
“Normally, I would listen to the news on my phone, and take my phone into the bathroom,” he tells me. “Having the phone there with the news on helps me with my timings – I know I have to be in the shower by a certain point, and get out of the shower when they read the time over the radio. So I was immediately three minutes late for the day.”
Commuting from his home in Hertfordshire to London was a struggle as well, without the ability to check temperamental train times. We share our Metro woes and our FOMO (fear of missing out). “There’s an apprehension about not checking e-mails. You feel in the dark about what is going on,” Wright says.
His fear over missing e-mails was shared by most people taking part in the challenge. All but one of them said they used the internet most for e-mailing – therefore this had a real impact on their ability to do work.
Wright signs off the call by telling me that he is about to brave the outside world and try to navigate his way to a meeting with a client. Putting down the phone, I get ready for a meeting of my own with Oli Farago, Coyote Software founder and chief executive and another fellow unplugger. The problem is that I’m not quite sure where I’m going.
An ode to CityMapper
Usually, I would type the postcode of the location I’m heading to into my CityMapper app, relying solely on technology to get me around town. But this was now out of the question, so to get from A to B, I have to use an A-Z of London instead. As someone who lacks even the most basic sense of direction, the prospect was terrifying.
I stand for a good 10 minutes in the reception area of my office, trying to figure out where on earth I’m supposed to be going – and, indeed, where I actually am in relation to my end point. I try to cross-reference the index entries with the relevant pages before I finally find the right square on the map and hot-foot it to Monument Street. Despite having to ask four people for directions, I make it there in good time (only three minutes late).
It seems that Farago is having a harder time than Wright being off the web. “This morning I woke up and went to use the internet four times in the first 15 minutes before stopping myself,” he says, adding that it’s almost impossible to do his day-to-day job. “Running a software company, everything I do – no exaggeration – uses the internet,” he says. He can’t even use his office phone, as it uses voice-over-IP and uses data. “We had an account management meeting today… and even for that our business intelligence is web based. So the team had printed out a little pack for us all to use.”
He even had to dial in to a meeting with a new client, because the Coyote team was demonstrating how to use the product – which uses internet. “My productivity has definitely gone down – I can’t do most of what I do.”
Like Farago, all but one of the unplugged participants thought digital connectivity was essential to their day, and a third said their meetings had either been somewhat or severely disrupted.
After sharing my London A-Z with Farago, who takes a picture of where he’s supposed to go for a meeting with a client in Victoria, I set off back to the office, secretly relieved that at least I’m not having as challenging a time as he is.
The rest of the afternoon goes by in a flash, and I’m astonished that I’ve managed to stay internet-free. Nevertheless, I find myself practically jogging over to Moorgate, where WiredScore is hosting its welcome-back-to-the-internet drinks, itching to get back online at 5pm.
“It was more challenging than I thought it was going to be,” says Legal & General IM office sector lead Andrew Mercer, as we discuss how each other’s days went.
“I had great ideas of building relationships and being really productive, doing things that I wouldn’t usually get involved in,” he adds. “But the reality was that I couldn’t find the contacts I needed to be able to do that, and trying to find different bits of information was difficult. I’m not sure I was as productive as I could have been.”
He sheepishly tells me about his “moment of weakness” – he had to ask others to look up phone numbers for him – and reflects on his relationship with the internet. “I’m definitely addicted to my phone,” he says. “There were moments when I was reaching for my phone without realising it. There is definitely an opportunity for everyone, perhaps, to spend a day without the internet.”
“There’s an apprehension about not checking e-mails. You feel in the dark about what is going on”
Nick Wright | CBRE
Wedding stress?
Vanessa Hale, director of research at BNP Paribas Real Estate, adds: “I would describe it as being a bit like your wedding day – stressful, fun, exciting… and a bit challenging.”
She wasn’t alone, as the majority of those taking part in the challenge said they found the day stressful.
Despite its challenges, the unplugged experience did exactly what it set out to achieve. It showed us all just how important connectivity is – not only in the workplace, but for safely, easily and efficiently navigating through the modern world. “It made me realise how much we are digitally connected, and how much it influences how we function in our day‑to‑day lives,” says Hale.
As the clock strikes 5pm, we all start to plug ourselves back into the internet. My phone sparks up like a strobe light, as dozens of e-mails, Twitter notifications and WhatsApps ping up on my screen, and I almost wish that we could live in a world where there was less digital noise.
But after replying to a few e-mails, checking up on news and logging my postcode into my CityMapper in order to get home, I realise that there’s no going back to reality. We might sometimes resent the noise and stress that comes with being embedded in a virtual world, but as nearly all of the unplugged participants would say, we really are better off living in than out.
To send feedback, e-mail lucy.alderson@egi.co.uk or tweet @LucyAJourno or @estatesgazette
WiredScore highlights our ‘unconscious’ internet habit
By Rollo Gwyn-Jones, director of marketing, EMEA, WiredScore
Connectivity has an image problem. Once it was synonymous with location and the transport links of a property. Then the internet happened, and connectivity referred to broadband and Wi-Fi. And then the smartphone became our primary interface with the internet, access to the cloud became essential and the buildings we live and work in became smarter. As we always do, we have adapted throughout and grown inextricably linked to our work, surroundings and community via the internet. But do we fully understand how our relationship with the internet and the tools we use to access it has evolved?
The purpose of the Unplugged Challenge wasn’t to prove the internet’s importance at work. Rather, it was to demonstrate, through a set of participants, the difference between our conscious and unconscious use of the internet. Statistics report that in the UK we spend more than eight hours a day on the internet, and we are increasingly conscious of those hours: mostly our desk work, communication and streaming of content. But we also spend a lot of time unaware that we are connected to the internet or relying on it: finding our way around, paying for things and using devices such as office entry apps or Alexa in the home.
This decoupling has been brought to life through the Unplugged Challenge. When WiredScore asked participants in advance what they would miss the most, they said e-mails; after the challenge, it was use of a search engine, then e-mails and then online messaging, showing a disparity between our perceived use of the internet and the reality. Correspondence was top on the list of activities most affected, but navigation came a close second. Participants said the lack of connectivity disrupted all parts of their days.
That had a visceral knock-on effect, with two-thirds of participants finding the day stressful. Imagine if this day hadn’t been planned. In total, 11 out of 12 concluded that “connectivity is essential” (the other one choosing “very important”). If this consensus was clear, then so too was people’s personal re-evaluation of their relationship with the tools that access the internet. As the level of connectivity grows, this can only be a good thing.
Unplugged Challenge 2020: who took part?
- Tripty Arya – founder and chief executive, Travtus
- Chris Boultwood – head of technology, Workspace
- Eoin Condren – director of joint ventures, U&I
- Faisal Durrani – head of London commercial research, Knight Frank
- Oli Farago – founder and chief executive, Coyote Software
- Vanessa Hale – director of research, BNP Paribas Real Estate
- Andrew Mercer – office sector lead, L&G Investment Management
- James Pellatt – director of workplace and innovation, Great Portland Estates
- Richard Pickering – chief strategy officer, Cushman & Wakefield
- Hema Selvaraj – innovation director, Grosvenor
- Nick Wright – senior director, CBRE
- Lucy Alderson – journalist, EG
