It doesn’t matter if we are in the office or not, the world has made it easier for us to work from everywhere—making your office, by default, everywhere. Laptops brought work on the road, smartphones brought e-mail to your hand and now airplanes bring Wi-Fi to greater heights. Not that I am against these modern conveniences of our technological world, but we need to work harder at keeping a healthy distance from work. In an article published by the Journal of Marriage and Family, they noted that ongoing use of mobile communications technology (cell phones and pagers specifically) was linked to heightened psychological distress and a reduction in family satisfaction. The ability to work anytime, anywhere makes you think that you should do just that. (I am still waiting for my BlackBerry to come out with a feature that lets you turn off an e-mail account for a weekend or a period of time without deleting the entire account.)
Do I really need to drive three hours up to Tahoe to disconnect? We should be able to disconnect right at home when we are not working. It seems that we have holidays for everything these days, why not have a National Disconnect Day? Before you gasp and drop your smartphone on the floor (missing your third Twitter update of the morning), National Disconnect Day would be on a weekend, of course. It doesn’t have to be an official holiday, but a personal one, a gift of sorts. Do it, set one up for yourself. Mark it on your calendar and follow through. Do not plug in or log on all day. And work through those feelings of guilt and the addiction of constantly being connected to the digital web. Go hiking, go to a museum, meet up with your friends face-to-face.
Hey it’s Friday, why not try it this weekend. Go ahead, I dare you, disconnect.
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