In 24/6, Tiffany Shlain explores how turning off screens one day a week can work wonders on your brain, body, and soul—and why this regular practice of looking up gives you a better chance of seeing the big picture.
Internet pioneer and renowned filmmaker Tiffany Shlain takes us on a provocative and entertaining journey through past, present, and future of ideas about time and technology and introduces a strategy for living in our 24/7 world: turning off all screens for 24 hours each week. She and her family call it “Technology Shabbat.” This weekly practice, which they’ve done for nearly a decade with their kids (16 & 10), has completely changed their lives, giving them more time, productivity, connection, and presence.
Drawn from the ancient ritual of Shabbat, living 24/6 can work for anyone from any background. With insight, humor, and wisdom, Shlain shares her story, offers lessons she has learned, and provides a blueprint to do it yourself. Along the way, she examines the neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and history of a weekly day of rest across cultures, making a convincing argument for why we need to bring this ritual back.
A compelling personal story and a far-reaching examination of the complex world we’ve created, 24/6 is an incisive and urgent call to rebalance ourselves, and society, through a transformative weekly practice. The book offers a universal, scientifically-grounded, easily doable strategy for living in our 24/7 world that offers exponential benefits.
About Tiffany Shlain
Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards. Her films and work have received over eighty awards and distinctions including being selected for the Albert Einstein Foundation’s Genius: 100 Visions for the Future. NPR named Shlain’s UC Berkeley address on their list of best commencement speeches, and her films have premiered at top festivals including Sundance and are used by the US State Department to foster dialogue at embassies globally. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is premiering her live cinematic essay performance called Dear Human on Feb 15th, 2020. Shlain serves on the Leadership Board of the Center on Media and Child Health at Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital, the advisory board of the WaitUntil8th.org initiative to delay smartphones for kids, and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. She and her husband and two children live in Northern California. Find out more on TiffanyShlain.com and follow on @TiffanyShlain.
Praise for 24/6
“Put down your phone and pick up this book. I did. In one day I read it in its entirety, convinced by the end that 24/6 is timeless and timely wisdom. Tiffany Shlain is a modern-day prophet, brilliant and incredibly funny in equal measure.”
– Angela Duckworth, New York Times best-selling author of Grit
“Here is the answer to the greatest collective and personal challenge of our time: reclaiming the essential dignity of being human in a digital age.”
– Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human and Present Shock
“At once a book of why, of how, and of quite specific how-to, Shlain delivers a moving family story, documenting the connections that make the need for the Shabbat important in the first place.”
– Sherry Turkle, MIT Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, author of Reclaiming Conversation and Alone Together
“An unusual and essential guide that combines tech savvy with advice on health and well being with a marvelous spiritual sensibility. Here is a place to turn if you feel there’s something missing in our modern world.”
– Jaron Lanier, best-selling author of Dawn of the New Everything and You Are Not a Gadget
“Moving from 24/7 to 24/6 is something so many of us are longing to do. The wisdom of Tiffany Shlain—and her family—is to have seen the relevance of ancient sacred ritual to this most contemporary of challenges. This book is a wonderfully refreshing and practical roadmap, as she promises, to both slowing down time and having more of it.”
– Krista Tippett, host of On Being and best-selling author of Becoming Wise
“An intensely personal story. She convinced me that a day of disconnection is a path towards reconnection to the rest of our lives.”
– Vint Cerf, co-creator of the Internet
“I don’t know how Tiffany Shlain does it. First the prize-winning movies, now an amazing book outlining a human way to manage our digital lifestyle. Like Tiffany, we all need to go 24/6. It’s a great way to seize back control from our digital overlords.”
– Andrew Keen, best-selling author of How to Fix the Future
“Tiffany is a 21st-century Marshall Mcluhan”
– Jean Rogers, director, Children’s Screen Time Action Network