I made it a habit of mine to completely stay "off the grid" during our family summer vacation. That means no WhatAapp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram - not even web browsing. The occasional exception is buying a new book for my Kindle, if I run out of reading material. But that was no issue whatsoever this year, since I was busy most of the time chasing after my son Timo on the beach.

Unfortunately, our family vacation in Italy went by really fast, which meant having to catch up with the usual stuff way too sun. But at least it wasn't too bad:

Most of these 85 Emails were just newsletters, notifications and the usual noise - hardly any personal messages needed an answer. The same was true for the couple of WhatsApp messages that came in. That means that my friends and family have adjusted to concept of my off-the-grid-vacation and fully respect it now, which is actually comforting and will make me enjoy my next family vacation even more.