The laws of unintended conciquence

I wrote earlier about not having a smart phone and life without it. To help understand where I was, I had a Palm Treo 650 for two years and a BlackBerry Curve 8330 for another year. So, all told I had a smart phone glued to my body for about three years. Help desk tickets came to my phone, personal and business e-mail, calls, network monitoring pages, news, etc. I was one connected (to work) kinda guy. I thought that I enjoyed all of this connectedness and that it made me a more valuable employee. Or, was that simply a perception of mine?

As a former boss of mine once said "perception is everything." How true that statement has turned out to be over the years. My perception of being glued to work 24x7 I thought would make me more productive and a more valuable employee. I could respond quickly to questions, emergency's, I could even secure shell into some of the Linux boxes from my smart phone. Working while enjoying a high school football game.

I kept up on personal stuff too. Twitter, Facebook, gmail, news, stocks, the list goes on. The joys of a smart phone.

That perception has been shattered now that I don't have that stupid little thing. As one moves through life and the changes that come with it, we should learn from everything. Life is a fluid one-way event that we have to enjoy along the way. Some areas of the path are rocky, dark and sometimes downright ugly, but I digress.

Liberation should be the word of the week. The realization hit me that all of that connectedness didn't help me out at all. It added to my stress level and frankly people can wait if they send me an e-mail. My BlackBerry isn't chiming each time a new e-mail hits my inbox. In fact, Outlook is closed as I write this post. I've resolved to only open Outlook twice a day, respond to e-mails and keep it close the rest of the time. If there is an emergency people can call my cell phone.

So, yes, perception is everything, but we should closely evaluate our own perceptions of ourselves and what we need and what causes stress. I'm feeling more productive and I have fewer interruptions.

Liberation.