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Listen, I am not a religious person. I'm a cultural Jew. But Shabbat, creating a space of one day off, which many religions do, creating a temple in time, is a really beautiful idea. And with today's influx of information, I just have found it extremely meaningful. And I actually kinda like the challenge of, "Hm, I have to get somewhere and I can't use GPS." We are using land lines, we do use a car. It's not like we're not having a light on. The rule we made was nothing that's gonna distract us. No TV. You know, just really just be present and talk to each other. And I found it really profound.

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Yes. I'm highly repentant really. That's why I try really hard to turn off. Because when I turn off I get to be present. I think that I'm more and more a believer of how hard it is to be present now. But to be present, I think is the next human goal because you don't have to anymore. You can be here, which is Mumbai or somewhere else, any time you want to.

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Well, from my point of view, quiet time is incredibly important, just the opposite of what you said. And in fact, it is always connected, always on that actually dampens the imagination. If you are bored, you can entertain yourself through your imagination. If you are pretending to always have stuff feeding in here, that keeps you from having to engage in major acts of imagination to invent games for yourself, to invent stories for yourself and so on and so forth. So I happen to be one who believes that always connected, always having this stuff flying at you is incredibly detrimental because it keeps you from ever imagining.

So we've gotta absolutely have kind of an information Sabbath where we definitely disconnect, and it's part of kind of the reason why I make this pun – I say I do my deepest work when I'm asleep. Well, part of that is another form of being disconnected. And let's just take that a little bit back into reality, too, because I live in the conscious world as opposed to the subconscious world. So I mean, I think that this whole sense of always reading e-mail is a deathtrap, death knell for creativity. Or let me say is a death knell for imagination. So I'm one that believes that the book is here for a long time; albeit it may be on a Kindle.

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I think that's an important thing to note. I don't personally need that. I do that in different ways. I just will focus in on our kids or do something with my partner Kara other things. But I think people need to be conscious of that need in themselves and manage to it.

If you're a person who wants to have some time where you're just reading a book, you do something that's non-digital, you don't want to be answering e-mails, I think there's an etiquette emerging around that. I certainly notice if someone doesn't get back to me right away. I don't expect them to unless it's something absolutely urgent, and then I'll try to find a way to get them, but otherwise, when they get there -- and in some ways the technologies can be the inverse of what we think. They can be kinder. That instead of the phone ringing, "I need to talk to you now," I can send you an e-mail or some kind of message, and you can get back to me when you have time.

I think the one thing that we really do need help with though is the volume of communications that are coming at us, and just leveraging whether it's machine learning that computers can learn from each other or some form of AI that will help us handle this stuff in a way that's to our liking. Not some kind of automated thing that's sort of the non-helpful version of the future, but the helpful version, I think will be really crucial as we go forward.

It's definitely worth shutting off all electronics from time to time, and preferably for more than a few hours, too.

I find that for the first 48 hours or so after I disconnect, I am downright cranky, likely to lose my temper at the slightest thing. I'm guessing that's because I'm just a tad addicted to my devices; after all, I do like to be able to find stuff out at the drop of a hat.

But after those first few days, I start to  notice changes -- positive changes. It's like my brain boots up again in its 'natural' configuration and I start having creative thoughts again , sometimes more in a few hours than I've had in months. Snippets of story ideas, lyrics to songs, ideas for thematic photo projects -- it's like technology lays a blanket over those parts of my brain in my day-to-day existence, and they shrug off that blanket once the incoming messages stop.

Hmm. Now I'm starting to wonder why I don't turn off more often ...