Ok, so I don’t know about other business owners, but for me taking a vacation… or let me rephrase that… the time leading up to taking a vacation is usually full of stress and sleepless nights. Perhaps it is just me and the way that I am wired, but I try my hardest to wrap up as many loose ends as possible to make my time away more relaxing and, just as importantly, to ensure my time away does not become a nightmarish culmination of project issues/questions for my business partners. We are in a service industry and are all very busy working with our great clients.
As I worked late the night prior to my departure I started to wonder, “have we forgotten how to disconnect from work?” Frankly, at that moment, I had too much to do to really think anymore about it, so it went into my cranial file of fleeting thoughts.
But… the thought came back immediately in the morning as I was at the airport. I was trying to conduct business on my iPhone, in the minutes before I boarded the plane…. Is it the advancements in technology that have made us forget how to leave work behind? Are we too connected? Do our clients expect all access, all the time?
For my vacation I rented a villa on the top of a small mountain called Mont Rouge, located in St. Martin, with spectacular views, great pool and of course… WiFi. I had rented the same place the year before and the villa’s office is right next to the pool. “Office???” you may ask, “You’re on vacation, why do you need an office?” Actually, the pool started inside the house so I could literally answer an email or forward an email to one of my designers and then jump into the pool.
In my opinion, a vacation has never been about being totally disconnected, it’s a balance, a change of scenery, a time zone change, experiencing a different culture and most importantly, managing a degree of connection to the office. The level of connection has to be set by you and you have to stick with the limits you set up, while still making your workflow and clients happy. Work does not go away just because you are someplace else.
There are many studies of how smartphones and tablets are creating generations of insular humans and how social interaction exists only on a virtual level. In a 2012 article, by Heather Kelly in Venture Beat News named “We don’t know how to take vacations anymore”, she explains that being connected for tourists is not always work, but rather a connection for when one is lost in a strange place. It is restaurant reservations, reviews, or even planning and researching the entire trip. All of this was not part of the equation 20 years ago and it is only possible by today’s technology. The article also speaks about an experiment by a Harvard Business School Professor with Boston Consulting Group and the benefits of disconnecting from the office for one evening a week, resulting in happier employees, increased productivity, and greater teamwork.
To this point, and perhaps as a counterpoint, my first “disconnected” day was spent at Orient Beach, a stunning beach with clear water and soft sand. I was astonished by how many people were actually conducting business, talking about products and stocks, etc. They were using all sorts of mobile devices… on the beach! I, luckily, could not get cell service. I did wonder, however… Who was their carrier?
The question is: can you disconnect, even for a short period of time?
