Technology truly is the leading enabler of today’s increasingly flexible lifestyle. We professional women all know that without it, any flexibility we have would be almost impossible.
Conference calling from home means you don’t have to be in the office at the crack of dawn to speak to London or stay there late at night to speak to LA. You can send e-mails as you wait in the carpool line. Your laptop allows you to have as much direct access to your work files as if you were sitting at your desk.
Kimberly Archer discovered the ultimate value of the Webcam when her third pregnancy threw her into enforced bed rest. At twenty-seven weeks’ gestation, Kimberly, pregnant with twins, found she was at risk of premature labor. Her doctors sent her to bed, but Kimberly, who works for a professional recruitment firm, was determined to carry on her job. Technology was her savior. She knew she could e-mail, call, conference call, and tap into company files all from her laptop—but, stuck in her bed, she also discovered she could “meet” prospective candidates and employers just by dressing from the waist up and firing up her Webcam. They didn’t see the crumbs and crumpled sheets— they just saw a professional woman in a smart jacket.
For Jennifer Dickey, the mechanical engineer in Detroit, technology allows precious time at home when there’s an unexpected family call. “I can log on to my work computer from my home computer and it’s just as if I was at work. The desktop looks the same, I have the same access to the same programs that I would have in the office. It helps greatly. For example, my daughter, who’s three years old, is not one of those children who is excited about going to school every day. She still has rough days. So today I was an hour late to work. But I can make up that time one night this week by logging on to the computer after the kids have gone to bed and getting an hour’s worth of work done then.”
But these miraculous flexibility-enhancing gadgets can also sneak in and steal time away from us. So much of this techy stuff is self-service—and if you’re like us, you can wind up in the middle of extremely frustrating evenings, trying to figure out how to get critical files off of a server. These gizmos need proper discipline or else they invade our personal lives with a vengeance.
“My son Jasper called my BlackBerry my new best friend once. That’s when I realized I was really in trouble,” Sarah Slusser confesses.
“I hear that checking your e-mails at night is an addiction. I know it was for me. If I had to get up at 3 a. m. to get a glass of water, I’d check my BlackBerry,” Chandra at Capital One admits.
“On my day off I only check my BlackBerry four times a day,” Stephanie at Marriott proclaims proudly—until she thinks for a minute and realizes she’s talking about her day off!
Sound uncomfortably familiar? Ah, that shiny little handheld box—five inches long, half an inch thick. It is both the keeper and taker of our freedom. Our perfect personal assistant; our incessant, portable, professional conscience.
katty I was years behind on the BlackBerry curve. I watched the “crackberry” addicts tapping over dinner and was appalled.
I couldn’t understand what could possibly be so urgent that they had to interrupt their salad to press send. I was pretty smug about my low-tech status and my self-imposed discipline. But sometime during the 2008 campaign the BBC decided enough was enough and they needed to be able to contact me while I was on the road. One Monday morning my producer handed me a BlackBerry. It sat in its packet for a week. But when I finally got round to using it I really was like an addict trying meth for the first time. I couldn’t put it down. I checked my e-mails every ten minutes and soon was checking them evenings and weekends as well. I didn’t "need” to for work, but somehow the fact that they were there, accessible in my purse, made me feel I had to. Soon my work was eating into my free time in a way it hadn’t pre-BlackBerry.
claire My BlackBerry is the key to being out of the office and with my kids when I need to be. I adore it. But between the hours of five and eight in the evening I’ve come to loathe it. I’ve noticed that I have a hard time putting it down during that critical dinner/bedtime hour, and that somehow when I get an e-mail from work—and they come fast and furious—I feel I need to respond instantly. Beyond that, those little messages almost act as tension transmitters. As I start to see what someone is asking me to do, my shoulders hunch, my mind gets into work-mode, and I’m suddenly ten times grumpier with my kids. Lately I’ve been simply putting it aside until after everyone is tucked into bed—and you can’t imagine how much more relaxed I feel!
The perils of e-mail addiction are enormous. It can easily become a time abyss that kills your personal productivity, distracts you from your work, and even hampers creativity. You’re not imagining this—there’s research to prove it.
Consider the findings from the following three studies:
stressed-out?—stop checking your e-mail!
Researchers at Glasgow and Paisley Universities in Scotland found in 2007 that e-mail, and its mismanagement, is a direct source of stress to employees. The study—completed
by a psychologist, a statistician, and a computer scientist— showed that more than one-third of respondents feel stressed by e-mail and the obligation to respond quickly.45
slaying your productivity—
e-mail, phone calls and mindless connectivity
A 2008 study commissioned by the luxury car maker, Cadillac, found that e-mails, phone calls, and mindless Internet surfing result in up to four out of eight hours of lost productivity each day!46
light up that doobie—e-mail makes you stupider.
Researchers at King’s College London University found in eighty clinical trials that trying to work—while checking e-mails—temporarily reduces the IQ by ten points, the same level of stupefaction caused by missing a night of sleep. Consider that smoking marijuana causes only a four-point temporary drop in functional IQ and you’ll find that you’re better off getting stoned than checking your e-mail every few minutes.47
But once you recognize that it’s you who should control your technology rather than the other way around, the process of asserting yourself can be remarkably easy and the benefits amazingly broad. When you pull the plug on your PDAs, the results are instant. You will immediately gain more time. This is just as critical at the office by the way. You’ll find you can focus on the big picture again. Most of the time spent on e-mails should be relegated to the unnecessary 80 percent.
And controlling your use of PDAs off the job will help you create a healthy separation from your workplace. Physically and psychologically, you will be more relaxed and able to live in the present. You will focus better—on your family, on your kids. Even your friends will appreciate it. All those real people in your life will no longer be competing for attention with your unreal best friend, your BlackBerry. At the risk of sounding a bit New Age about this, we think you will be a better wife/daughter/ mom/friend because you won’t be distracted.
So, here are our simple ways to cut the addiction:
1. Turn off incoming e-mail alerts on your PDA and your computer’s e-mail client. Don’t think about doing this or consider doing this or ponder doing it—just do it. You’ll find that not having a neurotic "ping” every few minutes will keep you from wasting time checking an e-mail whenever it shows up.
2. Do the 11/4 experiment. Studies have found that people are more productive, less stressed, and generally happier if they limit e-mail checking to twice a day— once at 11 a. m. and once at 4 p. m. You’re probably thinking "Sounds great, but it’ll never work for me.” Try this once, for one day, and then get back to us on that (preferably not by e-mail).
3. If you’re nervous that people will wonder where you are or what’s going on, make the technology work for you by writing an autoresponder to the effect of: "Hi. I got your e-mail and will respond to you shortly during my e-mail checking hours which are 11 a. m. and 4 p. m.”
4. Separate your technology. Keep your cell phone and your mobile e-mail device separate. Then you can take
breaks, leave your PDA and e-mails behind but still be able to call friends and family.
5. Leave the BlackBerry behind. Going out for dinner, a date, a movie? Remind yourself you can check it when you get back. Even an important meeting with a client or a brainstorming session will benefit from your full attention.
6. If you can’t trust yourself not to check your PDA when it’s in your purse or next to your bed, put it somewhere else. Literally leave that PDA at the other end of the house, move it up a flight of stairs. During the time it takes you to walk over and get it you have time to consider—why am I checking this? Do I really need to? The physical distance can help you unplug.
7. Set clear technology limits. Don’t check your e-mails after 7 p. m. Don’t check them during mealtimes.
Don’t check them more than once a day on weekends. Once you’ve decided you’re not checking e-mails or taking work calls, simply turn off the phone, BlackBerry, or computer.