There are basically two camps of thought on the web regarding the blackberry and similar digital tools that make us "always on":
-The tools have blurred the line of work/life to the extent that no one is ever away from work, therefore we must stage a revolt against the digital tools. Viva Revolution!!
-I like my Blackberry, and if you try to take it away from me, you're going to get the beatdown.
Color me as leaning towards #2. I'll check in my blackberry when you are giving the rest of my personal effects to my family and I have a toe tag on...
As with most things in life, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. There's an interesting recent clip from Maureen Rogers over at Pink Slip on the perils of being a Weekend Warrior:
"On a recent Sunday morning, I checked my e-mail, and found one from one of the other consultants I'm working with on a client project. I replied, and as I was hitting the "send" button, a message came in from one of the clients who was on the thread.
Five minutes later, one of other clients responded.
Of the six people on the e-mail list, four were working at the same time on a Sunday morning.
As a free-lancer, I don't so much mind the blurring of time and days, since my time is mostly my own. Working on a Sunday morning is an absolutely reasonable trade-off for staying in bed and doing nothing on a Wednesday.
But two of the four folks who weighed in on the e-mail are clients, who have full-time jobs. What's with all of us?"
There's a high likelihood that I would have been one of the people that pinged Maureen back that Sunday. But, here's the important point - I might not have. The digital tools in life, like the blackberry, give me flexibility during the workweek, then I have choices to make at night and on the weekends.
Sometimes I opt in to work on night and weekends; sometimes I don't. It depends on what color my mood ring is displaying.
What I value most about digital tools like the blackberry is that as a functioning member of corporate America, I am no longer tied to the office. You think Ward Cleaver could leave the office 2 hours early for a baseball practice? OK, maybe the Ward Cleaver (kids were older, one in high school, home at 4:30) we knew could. What about the Ward Cleaver who was a younger middle manager, with kids who were 6 and 2 years of age respectively? That Ward Cleaver probably hadn't arrived to the point where he could leave.
He had to stick around - no cell, no blackberry. Where the #@! is Cleaver? Why can't I get my overheads reproduced, since I don't like the conjunctions he used?
So give me the blackberry/digital leash. It's good to be able to get to other things - baseball games, school plays, dental care - without being worried that I have to be in the office to manage the next crisis.
As for you revolutionaries, I won't even email you or call you over the weekend, to show you my respect for balance.
That's just how I roll...
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Posted by: ReneeOdom18 | July 03, 2011 at 09:46 AM