Posted on: Monday, December 29, 2003
Tech age can make work a 24/7 ordeal
By Amy Joyce
Washington Post
For many of us these days, life and work are so intertwined it's hard to remember what it was like to leave work at the end of the day and just go home to, well, home.
Unless, of course, you're one of those people who make sure they are not attached to work 24 hours a day. Like Julie Lawson, co-founder with her husband, Galen, of 3-year-old Communication Visual, a graphic design studio in Washington.
Although they are of the tech generation — she's 25 and he's 28 — they decided about a year ago that they would make a conscious effort to free themselves from cell phones and electronic organizers and thereby separate work and life. And they meant it.
When they founded their firm in Florida, they worked in an office in their house. Lawson estimates they spent 17 hours a day in the home office, because they had easy access, but she figures they actually worked for only four or five of those hours. "We were thinking about work the whole time, but really just reading (newspaper) Web sites for much of it," she said.
So when the couple moved to Washington from Orlando a year ago, they saw an opportunity for change. They sublet an office in D.C. rather than hunker down in a home office.
"We liked the idea of being able to leave things behind," she said. And they refused to get PDAs or cell phones — yes, two professionals in the Washington region without cells. The goal was that when they left the office at night, they would really leave it.
Lawson was anxious at first. "I was a little more jumpy, making sure everyone knew where I was," she said. But soon the benefits outweighed her anxiety.
They don't check voice messages once they are home, and they log onto e-mail only when they absolutely have to. They still don't own cell phones, and Lawson said she just learned exactly what a BlackBerry was last week. They also don't have laptops to drag from one place to another, though they do have a computer at home just in case.
There is no one right answer to how to live and work; the Lawsons are just one example. There is no way their lifestyle would work for many people. In general, said Ane Powers, managing director of the White Hawk Group, a career and leadership coaching firm in Washington, people need to get their priorities clear in their "total" life so they "can find balance." Their own balance.
"Each individual needs to determine what's the best method for them," said Powers. Being as connected to the office as many of us are can be a great thing. Powers mentioned a three-week trip to Thailand she took earlier this year, right in the middle of a bid to win the business of a large client. She was able to go to an Internet cafe every day to negotiate the bid. Then she could leave the cafe and get on with her trip. "It made me feel comfortable to be out of the country for three weeks and maintain the business," she said.
John Putzier, a human resources consultant with FirStep Inc. in Prospect, Pa., said cell phones and PDAs have caused us to have a sort of "organizational attention deficit disorder."
"We're not doing any one thing very well. We're truly not being productive," he said. Those people who are running to catch the bus while talking to a client — what exactly are they accomplishing? Why not just wait 20 minutes until you are in the office, ready to sit down and really talk about a project?
The Lawsons' new work habits are to be applauded in a world that has become so work-entrenched, said Beverly Kaye, co-author of "Love It, Don't Leave: 26 Ways to Get What You Want at Work."
"We are a slave to so much of this. ... (We) stop at a light and think we can be accomplishing something," Kaye said. "It is time that is the precious commodity that we all so desperately seek. And we are so robbed of it by the information overload in our lives."
