"... temporarily remove yourself from the rut and routine of modern life in order to gain a new perspective and make changes according to what you find when you strip your life to the bare essentials".

Paraphrasing another highlight from this article, I would say that you can't understand the meaning of the statement above, unless you have done something like that, at least once in your life time.

Besides Thoreau, some other people, more or less famous, or not famous at all did exactly that: Nietzsche spent several summers in a remote area of the Swiss Alps, renting a tiny room where he created some of his masterpieces; Cheryl Strayed hiked the PCT on her journey from "lost to found". I myself hiked the Camino (not the crowded inflated French, but the real thing, Primitivo ), and a few years prior to that retreated for 10 days of silence to learn Vipassana, etc.

That's why I can't agree more with the main point of this article: this kind of "disruptions" are the best things you can do to change your life for the better, to heal yourself and your relationships, to discover who you really are, and who you might become.

I think that the point of total disconnect from the noisy world and stripping one's life to the bare essentials is the key.

Something profound happens in the silence of your solitude, within the simplicity of that "bare minimum" life.

I hope it sounds convincing:-)