Let me start this post on a more personal note: Man, I’m tired.
It’s ok with me if my loyal readers remember that there’s a person back here writing this, that despite the incredible polish and blinding erudition of (and occasional use of first-person-plural in) my posts they were not, in fact, created by a committee or an instance of Deep Blue.
No, it’s a person. At the moment a very tired person.
We just finished a very long, very exhausting holiday season over here. It was wondrous, and fun, and family-oriented, and spiritual. We shared it with guests, we ate way too much, danced, slept way too little, prayed, shared, sang, ate some more, and repeated all of it for a month or so.
I would not trade the last month for anything, as physically and emotionally draining as it is – because it is so spiritually enriching.
One of the side effects of this (other than a good bit of laryngitis from the singing) is that I spent less time in front of the computer than usual. That means I tweeted less, I facebooked less, I let LinkedIn kind of slide, and I didn’t go to very many networking events. (And yes, I’m quite aware of the fact that I didn’t blog much during that time. Thank you for pointing that out.) Being the head of a business gives me the latitude to divert my attention to other things – things that I consider very important in my life.
This does not mean that I was disconnected that whole time. Some of it, for sure – I don’t roll on Shabbos, for example – but not the whole time.
Now, I did say that we were going to discuss ways that technology can increase revenue and decrease costs. What does that have to creating a work-life balance?
It may seem like a stretch, but I consider being away from my computer a good thing. Not just for work-life balance, but mainly because there is only so much you can do from a sales perspective without actually going out and meeting people. And I repeat: being away doesn’t mean being disconnected.
I submit to you, my friends, that it is possible to do both – to step out from behind our keyboards, in our offices, sheltered from the world; to take in the fresh air, to go to meetings, to get out where the customers really exist - and to keep on being productive.
This will come as no shock to many of you – but the amount of computing power you can hold in your hand simply overwhelms what had been available even a few years ago. We are rapidly approaching, through the advent of mobile computing technologies, an age of ubiquitous computing – being able to do your work at any time, from anywhere.
There are two main flavors of mobile device that are leading this charge; the first – the smartphone – is not so new (The first popular smartphone, arguably, was the Handspring Treo 180 and it arrived in 2002 – that’s venerable in tech terms). The second is the Netbook – and that’s only been around for maybe 2 years. Both of these devices can make it possible to run an entire business from almost anywhere.
(What distinguishes a smartphone from a regular phone – or even something more sophisticated, such as an LG Voyager-type phone – is the ability for third party programmers to develop applications for the device. (That’s my definition, by the way, but it fits. ) They are true, multi-purpose devices – extensible through many channels, and capable of performing the vast majority of business functions.)
Netbooks are really just smaller notebooks – but with an important twist – they are designed to be in constant (or as constant as possible) connection with the Internet. Thus they’ll often come bundled with cellular capability, as well as WiFi. And because most run some flavor of Windows or Linux, they can run just about any programs the big boys can.
Smartphones, of course, are connected to the cellular network by default – but many also have WiFi capability too.
So both device can be used just about anywhere (and I’ve hedged several time on the “ubiquitous” thing – cellular and WiFi are almost everywhere, but not really everywhere. So for now, it’s “almost” and “just about” and so on).
And here’s the important point, which we will discuss more next time: much of what you need to do to run a business can exist out there in the Internet, using Software as a Service and cloud computing. No servers, limited stuff on the client machine, and available wherever you can connect.
Now, to bring things back full circle. Many years ago I got a Franklin Day Planner. This notebook-on-steroids came with training in order to use it. A valuable lesson from the training: always take your day planner on vacation. Why? Because writing something down – an appointment, an idea – when it occurs to you gives you the right to forget about it for the time being.
This is the key to how mobile devices can enhance your work-life balance. Don’t pass up a chance to send out a note, or book an appointment, or check your email – and then be done. Take just a moment – do a little business – and then put it away. You’ll have better peace of mind, knowing you won’t let that piece of business fall through the cracks; you’ll continue to be productive; and you’ll be out in the fresh air.
That’s a step in the right direction.
Until next time,
Phil
