Rik Myslewski reminds us that life extends beyond the small screen--even when it’s a beautiful Retina display.

If you’ve been a Mac|Life reader for more than a month or three, you know that these few paragraphs normally prattle on about chip design, process technologies, communications protocols, or some other geeky goodness. This month will be different. Let’s talk about learning.

First gather up your iPhone, iPad, iPod, Kindle, BlackBerry, Android thingie, and whatever other mobile digital toys you may own. Open your T-shirt drawer. Bury those devices underneath your collection of “Think Different,” “Hello, I’m a Mac,” and “Once you go Mac, you’ll never go back” Hanes Beefy-Tees. Then close the drawer and leave it closed for at least a week. Minimum.

Now spend that week moving through the world without earbuds in your ears or a glowing display inches from your eyes. Listen to the world around you. Look at it. Hear voices. See faces. Admire bird calls. Marvel at clouds. Or simply enjoy the sound of silence--and I don’t mean the ancient Simon and Garfunkel tune.

Get out of your digital cocoon and talk to people who share the same chunk of space and time. Example: While waiting in line at Whole Foods Market with my overpriced little tub of oh-so-tasty Politically Incorrect Mix, I often see someone paying for their basketful of organic goodies while earbuds squirt God knows what into their cochlear canals. Not only is this self-imposed audio isolation hella rude to the salesclerk, the squirtee is also missing a golden opportunity to interact with said clerk, to offer a smile or a kind word--or, more to this month’s point, to ask a question.

There’s a lot to be learned from real-time interactions with people who aren’t (yet) on your Facebook Friends list, in your iPhone’s Favorites file, or whose identity may not start with @. Someone who’s right in front of you is able to communicate with subtleties of body language and expression that can never be conveyed by a coded ROTFLMAO.

Divest yourself of digital distractions, and you can also learn more about someone else: you.

Case in point. I read an article in this morning’s paper about a guy who has a repetitive, physical job. While working, he wears DJ-quality headphones to pump dance beats into his head. “There are lots of things going through my brain at one time,” he told the interviewer. “The music kind of silences it all.”

That was one of the saddest things I’d read in some time. I wanted to grab him, shake him, and say, “Your brain is your mind, dude! It’s where your ideas come from. It’s where your insights appear. Don’t. Shut. It. Up. Use it to create something. Compose a sonnet in your head. Hell, even a lascivious limerick.”

And it’s not just tunes that “silence it all.” Sitting on the bus, staring into your iPhone, playing yet another level of Angry Birds, you’re removed from the now that you share with your fellow riders. Put down your iPhone, your Kindle, your iPad, your whatever, and look around you. Notice people, things, pants, architecture, sensations--the world in which you live and the people with whom you share it. Undistracted, you’ll learn more about that world. And about yourself.

To be sure, our cute li’l iOS devices can provide reams of knowledge and inspire sparkling insights. But sometimes they’re merely distractions, barriers to new experiences. So put them in that T-shirt drawer from time to time, and discover what you can learn--and do--without them in hand. Remember, as Mr. Hoots so wisely advised Ernie on Sesame Street, sometimes you’ve gotta put down the ducky if you want to play the saxophone.

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Since the late 1980s, Rik Myslewski has paid his rent by keeping an eye on Apple. He was editor-in-chief of MacAddict from 2001 until its transformation into Mac|Life in early 2007, and is now a member of the snarkily sophisticated team at London’s The Register, which is “biting the hand that feeds IT” daily at www.theregister.co.uk.