Don't Unplug: How Technology Saved My Life and Can Save Yours Too

by Chris Dancy

Chris Dancy, the world's most connected person, inspires readers with practical advice to live a happier and healthier life using technology

In 2002, Chris Dancy was overweight, unemployed, and addicted to technology. He chain-smoked cigarettes, popped pills, and was angry and depressed. But when he discovered that his mother kept a record of almost every detail of his childhood, an idea began to form. Could knowing the status of every aspect of his body and how his lifestyle affected his health help him learn to take care of himself? By harnessing the story of his life, could he learn to harness his own bad habits?

With a little tech know-how combined with a healthy dose of reality, every app, sensor, and data point in Dancy's life was turned upside down and examined. Now he's sharing what he knows. That knowledge includes the fact that changing the color of his credit card helps him to use it less often, and that nostalgia is a trigger for gratitude for him.

A modern-day story of rebirth and redemption, Chris' wisdom and insight will show readers how to improve their lives by paying attention to the relationship between how we move, what we eat, who we spend time with, and how it all makes us feel. But Chris has done all the hard Don't Unplug shows us how we too can transform our lives.

Genres: Technology, Self Help

274 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 4, 2024

About the author

Health and wellness pioneer, healthcare technology leader and entrepreneur, Christopher Dancy is frequently referred to as “the world’s most connected human.” Since the 1990s, when he was responsible for platform and technical development for the internet startup of WebMD, he has helped launch a number of successful startup companies in the technology and healthcare industries while serving in digital product development, senior management and leadership roles.

He has been featured on the cover of Businessweek and as“patient zero in the digital health revolution” for the Showtime documentary series Dark Net, and has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, NPR, the BBC, Fox News and Wired. As a personal health visionary and innovator, utilizing up to 700 sensors, self-diagnostic devices, applications and services to track, analyze and optimize personal health management – from caloric intake to spiritual well-being, he is able to demonstrate the connections of otherwise invisible data and forecast a transformation that will soon take place in consumer health and nutrition, healthcare business and beyond.

His credits will include “author” with the forthcoming release of a manifesto and autobiography via St. Martin’s Press entitled “Don’t Unplug - How Technology Saved My Life and Can Save Yours Too.”

Reviews

[Monica Willyard Moen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is definitely not my cup of tea! I found the authors presentation style to be shallow and self involved. He seems to lack awareness of how he affected people around him. He writes about creating false personas online to get attention and cause people to like him as if that is business as usual for a man who is in his late 30s. He seems to revel in delight at his mothers telling Michael Jackson’s manager that he had cancer and was dying in order to get an autographed photo to make him a hit on his first overnight class trip.
This book seems to be promoted as a self-help book about how using technology to track every detail of your life can make you a better person and save your life. There seems to be a nugget of wisdom when he explains how he figured out which types of music help him focus when he has been fighting distraction or the urge to binge on something destructive. However, most of the book seems mired in self focus that can’t be healthy in the long term, a form of narcissism. I finished the book feeling sad and discouraged. This does seem to be how our culture is shaping itself now, and that is a very bad thing. It will cause us to end up being alone and disconnected as any period of intense self focus and choosing behaviors based on responses from social media leads us to do.

[Peter Lijnse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this over a weekend. Love the story Chris is telling about how he used technology to get insight in his life and behaviours. The book is divided in topics that pull you in to read how he started to understand certain elements. I knew already a bit about Chris' story, but this made it all come together. I made some changes about how I used technology for myself based on this book, might read some chapters again to get more insight for myself. Don't unplug, use technology to enhance or save your life.
Based on this book I made some changes to the way I use technology. I got very anxious about my exercise routine in combination with the apple watch. Needed to meet my move goal. I now am more relaxed, still focusing on my health and exercise, but I let the technology not force me. I still look at the data on a regular basis, but with a different mindset.
I changed my phone setup. Certain apps I found I used too often I put somewhere on a thirdpage. It reduced my time for these apps. Apps I wanted to use I put on the main page. I now use them more. This was great advice from the book. I contemplating the messaging for the future. Intrigued by that. There are lots of great recommendations in this book you can immediately apply to your life. I think there is something in this book for everyone.

[Naum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scattershot in focus, at least in my reading -- didn't know if this was an autobiography or advocacy in embracing surveillance capitalism to further your own personal ends. I reckon it is a fusion of both.

[Tony Iannone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chris Dancy's book Don't Unplug is very timely for many reasons. The amount of data and access to the Internet we have literally in the palm of our hands can be overwhelming. Chris' book takes us on a journey. While on this journey he wants us to know that we should not unplug, that our devices and the software we have available to us can be used for so many good things! Just like the saying, "No mud, no lotus," Chris lets us know that if you decide to take this digitally connected journey it is not for the faint of heart. He provides the reader with a roadmap, his own, brutally honest story about his own life. In this story we learn how Chris dealt with (and stills deals with) emotions like fear, stress, and anxiety just to name a few. He describes panic attacks he's had. He tells us how lonely he has been and what it was like to find his true love! Threaded throughout these stories we learn about how he used technology not to solve his problems but to collect data, on himself, in an effort to self-reflect. Through his self reflection he shows the reader how he used the data he was generating to make subtle, and sometimes not so subtle changes to his lifestyle. The book is loaded with suggestions, apps to try, and ways to self-reflect on our own personal journeys. The thing that will keep me coming back to this book over and over again is Chris' story. By revealing so much of himself to the reader, "this" reader has come to understand that he is not alone and that the only way to move forward is to acknowledge where you are right now and take steps to help your future self be in a better place when "you" get "there" with him/her!

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those of use who's lives and livelihood depend on connection and digital interactions, this book offers insights into how you view and value the spaces you exist in online. A digital influencer and uber connected individual shares their perspective of a digital, quantified, and monitored self --- what this means when he first started in 2008 and how this practice has evolved to now in 2018. There are many ways link our selves to services, applications, workflow and consumption, so I liked how this author offered a few suggestions and ideas of how to reflect further on what this looks like in your life when you can just avoid, delete, or unplug online. The author offers some ways to be more intentional in our interactions, practices, and behaviors to include human contact and consideration for our almost automatic digital actions.

[Regina Scarborough · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a uniquely crafted personal life story of one man’s life story while at the same time integrating hi tech career experience and key learnings for a happier, more effective life.

The more he was connected to the computer apps and social media, the more information he had available to optimize his life. At first when readin this story I thought the book would be helpful to only those the are digital for a job, but the more I read the more I appreciated the all inclusive sharing contained in the book. There are tips for everyone continued within... social media, apps, health, diet and exercise, self live etc. I think it’s a quick read and one that many can gain important insight from.

[Ryan Munsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insights from a thoughtful writer who genuinely cares about our health. I especially love the hidden Easter Eggs left for those paying close attention! This book should be a must read for anyone who uses technology.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I absolutely love the premise of utilising technology to live better lives, the book was light on details on how to actually do any of it. The author employs a range of body-worn devices and smartphone apps to capture all sorts of data, from email analytics to his mood. But other than an offhand reference to a couple of scripts he hacked together, it isn't at all clear how he then manages to manipulate this deluge of data pouring in from dozens of sources to glean any useful information from it, which renders his advise to do the same rather meaningless.

He also fawns glowingly over corporations and their leaders with less than stellar records on privacy and exploiting its users, and aside from emphasizing the need to maintain personal access to it, glosses over the concerns over the surveillance and abuse of the collected data.

The autobiographical parts were personal and interesting, but it also made the application of the tools very specific to his rather unique situation, without a lot of guidance on how the techniques could be applied by people in very different places in their lives.

Still, he deserves credit for being a pioneer in the burgeoning field of cyborg augmentation, and respect for practising what he preaches.

[Julian Pecenco · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a strange book for me. Being unaware of Chris Dancy prior to reading it, I was pleasantly surprised to find out he was a leader in self-tracking and quantified self, which I find fascinating and might pursue more if I had any coding skills. That said, it was difficult to figure out where he was going in this book. It was a memoir, of course, and our lives are rarely straightforward, but the narrative was difficult to follow.

In the end, my biggest issue was trying to discern the point. He kept saying that we should use various platforms to share with each other, but not with big data, with no ideas of how one could possibly do that, let alone avoid being a target of identity theft and other malfeasance.

I would love the ideal world of having (free or inexpensive) access to the algorithms and platforms that can crunch all my personal data while still protecting me from the misuse of said data, but that seems to be the opposite of what's actually happening.

[Sam Engström · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't Unplug is not the ordinary academic research based self-help book, but a biography that derives thought-provoking and sometimes excitingly counterintuitive advice from Chris' personal experience. I enjoyed how the story progressed from data and information through to knowledge and wisdom with the unavoidable and sometimes amusing sidesteps along the way. The book provides a persuasive argument that while technology sometimes seems to squeeze the juice out of us we shouldn't abandon it but can instead repurpose it to serve our values and goals.

[Valerie Vlasenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was privileged to meet the author in person. He gave a keynote at the event I was speaking at and I got extremely interested in the topic - how technology can help us to become better human beings. Don’t Unplug is an expanded version of that keynote. It is a very personal story about Chris’ journey to knowing & understanding himself through technology. I would definitely recommend reading it, especially to those who feel their relationships with technology went out of balance. You can find a lots of hands-on tips there ;)

[David Parente · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the end, the book did little to convince me to stay connected.

I would only recommend this if you are passionate about being connected. Does little if you are not sure or need convincing.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think Don’t Unplug has the potential to inform readers, but I struggled getting into this one. Unfortunately, this one is now in my DNF pile.

[Jessica Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book about using all the advanced technology we have today to better ourselves.

[Bill Lydon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative and current

[Felice Lam · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you think tracking data in your life feels weird, this memoir will make you feel like you aren’t alone. :) And it’s all good and okay.

[Eileen Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

It opened my eyes to how so much technology is used and misused. This guy has used it all. I don't think I will ever want to get that much into technology. Good read as both informative and fun following this man through hooking up to almost every device known to man.

[Katiecaper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost stopped this audio at several points along the way but made myself complete it on the third or so try. I enjoyed learning from Chris and also couldn’t believe at times I’d continue to listen or care at all.