2 Responses

1. 

   James Robert Lay

   July 6th, 2009

   This turned out to be a full blog post when thinking about this in detail. Thx for starting the discussion Brad. This would have never happened had you not been on vacation. Gotta’ love the irony of this.

   When it comes to technology and staying connected, this has always been a tough and tricky issue between my wife and I. I am uber connected during the week on multiple channels as you know. From email, to Twitter to text to voice.

   However, when I get home, she likes for me to disconnect for a while so I can connect with her. I admit that sometimes I am like a crack head always touching, checking or playing with my phone. This does sometimes cause some tension in our relationship and when I stop and really think about it, I can go to the extreme sometimes messing with the crack berry for no reason at all.

   For this reason, a lot of my tweets take place from 7AM – 7PM and then cease for the evening. We have had many debates about this but I can say that when I do disconnect, I feel better and more refreshed the next day. Plus, it is very easy to focus on the virtual connections while the personal connections in front of our eyes question where we are.

   Taking that thought further, the issue arises on vacation. How connected should we be when traveling (for vacation)? It really is a personal choice. There is no right or wrong answer, but allow me to share my thoughts with you.

   My wife and I enjoy traveling. Sometimes I think it is the only time to truly escape and get away. No phone, email, text or anything. Sometimes by choice. Sometimes based on the environment because where we go they may not have “connected” technology as the location is off the beaten path.

   For example, we have been to an island where we stayed in a place that had only 3 walls, no AC, no TV, no phones and no WiFi in the room. They did have one computer in the lobby which I checked twice. It was a comfort thing just to check in on the “outside world”. Did I really need to check email? No not really… it just made me feel better.

   Then there was a trip where the Internet connection on the local computer was running 14.4kbs. At this speed it was not even worth checking email. I did use an international calling called to call and check on the office twice but other than that, I disconnected entirely. When I came back from vacation, I was super relaxed, rested and much more productive and creative.

   Finally, on our last vacation during the Christmas and New Year season, I did bring my laptop (once again, more of a comfort thing and checked email only twice). I also had my phone number forwarded to an international cell. Yeah… that was dumb. It was supposed to be my wife’s mobile number but Sprint screwed up and it ended up being mine.

   I did call into the office twice to check on things. No big issues with the mobile phone except for one client who called my mobile (knowing I was overseas on vacation). My wife and I were getting ready to go out to dinner and like an idiot took the call.

   It was at this point a light came on and I was thinking to myself WTF! I am overseas, on vacation and my work is following me and I cannot disconnect. It also made me realized there were many other issues with this client and they had slowly but surely overstepped their boundaries (calls at 7:00 AM… calls at 9:00 PM… all on my mobile… all on my personal time). Everything was always panicky or some kind emergency.

   It was at this point, in a smokey (not really… just adds a nice dramatic touch) French hotel room I realized I could not always cater to clients needs 24/7 as it was putting a burden on me… burning me out and wearing me down. Because in reality, his calls and issues were not really emergencies. This was just his nature, personality and internal culture of his organization. Poor (or no) planning. Always waiting till the last minute. I had been dealing with this for about 6 months. There were bigger issues within the organization and I begin to see that this kind of behavior was driven from the top down.

   Things had to change. The client was taking advantage of the relationship and accessibility he had to me. I had to change the game. I had to re-teach the client about what is acceptable in terms of contact and accessibility and what is not. This is a whole other story. However, to this day, we still do great things together. The boundaries just had to be reset. He still can get panicky from time to time about “emergencies” but there is now a mutual respect that has been established.

   But… the whole point of this was to discuss the dealings of technology (primarily communication) while away on vacation as well as setting boundaries.

   For me, having my phone or laptop come with me on vacation is more about comfort… like a kid with a blanket… than it is about actually using it. I think because we are super connected, when we become disconnected, our environment changes and we must learn to cope and adapt w/o technology.

   However, when we are on vacation, we must learn to adapt fast before vacation is over and we must head back to an uber connected world.

2. 

   Brad

   July 7th, 2009

   Great comment JRL. Establishing some ground rules for ‘connectedness’ before vacation with the spouse is probably always a worthwhile effort so not to rub each other the wrong way.

   Hate to start off a great vacation with annoyance ya know?