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Cell Phone or Celebrate -- To Unplug or Not to Unplug

Do You Dare Unplug? ... Last week's PikeNet Poll asked the question: Do you check your e-mail weekends and holidays? The results: 45% Yes, 39% Sometimes, and 16% No (247 votes). ... E-mail is so important that most of us don't want to leave our e-mail unmonitored for 48 hours. No wonder people feel stressed. ... My Out Is Over Dispatch (Oct 18, 1999) generated many thoughts on finding a balance between our business and personal lives. Here are four excerpts:

Ben Frederick Frederick Realty, Towson, MD: "I go for a bike ride. I love riding my bike, grunting up a hill or breezing down...the wind in my face, the sun on my back. I leave the cell phone and pager at home..."

Bill Behr, Trammell Crow (Bill's personal web site) "I RARELY 'unplug' from the wired world. To provide more responsive customer service means being available. ... Yes, that means sacrificing some personal space, but the use of pagers, cell phones, e-mail, etc. are the essential tools for staying in touch. I find the more I communicate with clients the greater the level of trust and confidence that develops between us."

Ken Hearst, Walpert Properties: "I went to a bed and breakfast last month that was one hour outside of St. Louis. I left my cell phone in the car, and I never left the bed and breakfast. I didn't watch TV, I didn't get in my car and I didn't check messages. My wife and I stayed for two nights and we sat out by the pool, read books and relaxed. It felt great to be unreachable, we booked the bed and breakfast again for next year."

Jim Wadsworth, United Properties: "The key is for us to clearly understand the difference between an improved standard of living (or maybe better stated as an ease of living) and a decline in the human touch component. ... Relationships are improved with hard work and direct contact ... We all would really prefer to be an integrated human 'being' not simply a remote human 'doing.'" ... Good thoughts.

--Peter