I accomplished a feat during a recent weeklong vacation that made me proud: I only checked my e-mail once.
It wasn’t easy.
As technology improves, the pressure to keep tabs on our workload is getting worse.
Despite the pleadings of workplace professionals that people cut the office cord while on vacation, it has become impossible for some thanks to the proliferation of smart phones — BlackBerries, Palms, Qs and all the others with QWERTY keyboards — designed to put e-mail on our belt clips and in our purses.
Most people want a mobile phone on vacation (what if the rental car breaks down or you need a tee time?), but, increasingly, that means your e-mail is taking the trip, too.
At the nation’s top wireless carriers, smart phones have become all the rage. Each sells about a dozen different models. At Sprint, roughly 20 percent of phones double as e-mail devices. At AT&T (formerly Cingular Wireless), it’s closer to 30 percent. The stats are similar at T-Mobile and Verizon.
The BlackBerry Pearl, a sexy phone, is one of T-Mobile’s top sellers, a spokesman said, with three out of four Pearl buyers upgrading from a regular phone. Samsung’s nifty BlackJack, a model for AT&T, is another cool item adding to the problem.
How bad is it?
According to a survey earlier this year by WorkPlace Media, 81 percent of Americans check their work-related e-mails or voice mail while on vacation.
“It’s impossible for most people not to check,” said Jeff Lehman, a vice president at the company.
Another survey, conducted last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that 60 percent of people said it would be very hard or somewhat hard to give up e-mail.
“It’s the double-bind of technology,” said Lee Rainie, the Pew project’s founding director. “People love the way technology can liberate and empower them. At the same time, this always-on, always-connected status has pitfalls.”
Some people call e-mail attachment an addiction, but I’m not willing to go that far and trivialize the difficulties people have with quitting smoking, gambling or drinking.
Yet it’s clear we have an e-mail problem.
Do you feel compelled to check e-mail during vacation? Is it bothersome you’re not involved in the back-and-forth missives about a client’s problems? Do you check e-mail on vacation because you dread coming back to the virtual backlog that awaits you?
These are all feelings I’ve had over the years, and they have taken time away from those that matter most, my family.
If you think your office can’t possibly function for a week or two while you’re away, odds are your ego is so huge that your co-workers or underlings can’t wait for you to leave.
I once had a boss like that and I would routinely win wagers with co-workers on the number of e-mails we’d get from him while he was spending quality time with his family.
Try this game: Guess how many e-mails you think the boss will send while he’s gone. Use that number to set the over/under line. Pick the over. Always.
I’m working hard at not being that guy. Here’s what I’m doing:
I don’t own a smart phone. If you’re on vacation with one of these, you’re tethered to the office.
Instead, take your spouse’s phone or, if you both have these e-mail-friendly gadgets, do your family a favor and get a cheap phone that, ta-da, just makes calls. Odds are you can afford a simple phone if both of you are that important.
(To be fair, I review smart phones often and quite like them. I’ve been mighty tempted to buy one, but so far I have survived without one. If it’s important enough to reach me, those people have my mobile number.)
I use an out-of-office reply that tells people I will not be returning their message. I tell them who to contact instead. Same thing with voice mail — I tell callers they won’t be hearing from me.
When you get back from vacation, get to the office an hour early that first day. Devote the hour to cleansing your inbox.
This approach is much better than telling the family you need 15 minutes a day to check e-mail during vacation. Everyone knows it will be way more than 15 minutes, not including the time you then spend reflecting on what’s happening at the office.
“The volume [of e-mail] we get can be overwhelming,” Rainie said. “It’s like you have this devil sitting on your shoulder telling you what’s going to happen if you miss a message.”
What will happen if you miss that message?
You’re going to go down a slick slide right behind your kid, laugh at a lame joke with your spouse, have time to read that page-turner and even give some clueless umpire a piece of your mind at the ballpark.
What would you rather miss?
– – –
Tangled in Net
60%
Amount of respondents to a Pew Internet & American Life Project poll who said it would be very hard or somewhat hard to give up e-mail.
25%
Amount of respondents who said it wouldn’t be hard at all to give up e-mail.
