The Work Life Balance Killer

I've owned a Blackberry since 2003 and while it has in many cases made my gadget-head tech-geek heart flutter with joy, I am utterly convinced that it's gone a long way in killing any semblance of work-life balance while leading to a mild case of adult-onset attention deficit disorder. This phenomena of smartphones and technology-enabled mobility being the bane of boundaries between work and life was well-chronicled in a recent article in the New York Times, and I can attest that it's largely true.

The work-life balance thing is largely eliminated because now it takes every ounce of discipline for me not to respond to e-mails that I get at all hours of the night and during the weekend. The choice is often this: do I either not respond and let my "to do list" steadily pile up to the ceiling or do I respond and inevitably get into a Blackberry message back-and-forth exchange with a colleague at 10:30 in the evening or on Saturday afternoon? And despite most managers and colleagues rhetoric around "respecting work and life" balance, the smartphone comes with the expectation that you'll be more responsive and more available. Or as many have stated before - it's a leash.

It doesn't have to be, and the article cites some good tips on how you can mitigate the problem. Setting expectations amongst your colleagues helps, as does my little trick of typing up responses (thus getting the relief that my work is done) but NOT sending it out until I'm back in the office in the morning or Monday (this avoiding the back-and-forth, since everyone wants to get the last word in so they can go to sleep or otherwise push work to the side for a bit). This works especially well if you've set the aforementioned expectations that my response to your e-mail does not need to be received by you at 11pm (e.g. If you want to be a workaholic, that's your prerogative, but don't drag me down with you). The only snare to this strategy is when you have a colleague who is obvious confused about some time-sensitive task and you absolutely need him or her to understand what they're doing sooner than later.

The even worse part about smartphones is the adult-onset ADD. My wife calls my Blackberry "my mistress", given my attention to it, and I haven't been great at proving her wrong. Between streaming audio, video, e-mail, gaming, information, references with the ability to access content around any topic of interest - plus interactivity with your entire social circle on a real-time basis, it's remarkable what these devices can do. Between that lure of the blinking red light indicating a new e-mail, instant message or Facebook update and the stream of consciousness "I remember or wonder about X, let me check Google, Wikipedia or YouTube..." it's easy to be in presence of friends and family but not really be "there", or drift quickly out of the conversation and divert your attention to your smartphone.

As technology continues to evolve and meet even more immediate needs of the individual's stream of consciousness and curiosity. Microsoft last winter started to come out with ads for Windows Mobile 7 and "a phone to save us from ourselves" including an excerpt where a man turns to man typing away on a smartphone in front of a urinal and says derisively "Really?" I'd like to see how better technology will lead us to become less enslaved, dependent and addicted for more of it - but I'm not hopeful.