Tuesday I wrote about what some companies are doing to force their people to disconnect and yesterday I offered some ideas about how individual managers at any level can encourage it.

Is any of this applicable to startups?

Actually, it’s especially true in startups where environments, which 30 years ago meant 80-hour weeks, but have increased to near 24/7.

Not only do we have difficulty maintaining personal boundaries with work because our lives and jobs are so enmeshed with technology, but we also feel intense pressure from our organizations to be “always on” and immediately responsive to calls and emails outside of normal working hours. —Knowledge @ Wharton

That’s a pretty accurate description of most founders and, like it of not, they are their company’s primary role model—the person everyone tries to channel.

Do a little eavesdropping any place where startup people congregate and you may leave with the impression that pulling all-nighters is a competitive sport.

But people are like batteries and down time is the equivalent of an alternator.

If the alternator on your car stops working and you keep driving eventually the battery dies.

Come back tomorrow for a look at the benefits of extending founder vision beyond your product.

Flickr image credit: Doug Waldron

Yesterday I said I would offer some ideas for helping people on your team disconnect, since not all companies are willing to shut down email at night in order to force the issue.

Even the ones that do might not accomplish what they intend given that there are plenty of ways to continue working without corporate email.

So what can one manager do to change attitudes within her own group?

As usual, much of the answer is found within MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), both yours and your team’s.

For your team, one of the most important is recognizing that digital addiction is more about its effect on ego than a love of gadgets.

“Being a successful member of middle class society is showing our dedication to professional work and being available at all hours of the day.” –Carolyn Marvin, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication

Changing that perception requires more than a statement or directive from you.

I’ve said over and over “to change what they do change how you think.”

You need to change your beliefs and your actions.

There is no way you can tell your team to take a digital break if you don’t take one.

Why would anyone do what you say when they see you doing the opposite?

If they can always reach you nights, weekends and vacation by email or phone do you really believe that they will disconnect?

Worse, if you actively contact them during those times they wouldn’t dare not to be available.

To make disconnecting truly productive from both your/company’s point of view and the individuals’ requires an open conversation.

Use the article Wharton article as the basis for a “say anything” discussion and together create a holistic digital framework that provides the downtime needed to have a life and recharge without cost to organizational accomplishment, personal perceptions or ego.

I guarantee that if you make the time and commit to doing the work your group’s productivity and creativity will skyrocket while turnover drops like a stone.

Join me tomorrow for a look at how disconnecting plays in a startup.

PS Happy Leap Day!

Flickr image credit: Mike Licht

“Employers are recognizing that it is helpful for employees to have boundaries. … People can learn to shut things off. It’s not easy, and it requires dedicated effort.” –Stewart Friedman, Wharton practice professor of management

There was a time when people bragged about always being available; how no matter where they were or what they were doing they were reachable.

Some still do, but many more are (or have) quietly burned out and are just going through the motions.

The spark is gone and that has put a major damper on innovation, creativity, productivity and caring, or engagement if you prefer.

While many companies still encourage that mindset others are moving to change it.

Companies from Atos, the French information technology services giant, to Deutsche Telekom to Google have recently adopted measures that force workers toward a better work-life balance, with scheduled breaks from the Internet and constant connectivity.

In a bid to combat employee burnout, staff at Volkswagen will be limited to only receiving emails on their devices from half an hour before they start work until half an hour after they leave for the day, and will be in blackout mode the rest of the time.

As opposed to warm and fuzzy work-life balance attitudes, these efforts are grounded in hard-headed, pragmatic, selfish business sense.

If people burn out, become less innovative and productive or have to deal with upheaval in their personal lives as a result of being always on it costs the company cold, hard cash.

Less innovation and lower productivity makes the company less competitive.

Replacing people is not only very expensive, but irreplaceable institutional knowledge is also lost.

Smart companies take care of their assets and these days that means both controlling connectivity and changing the culture, so that turning off is no longer a mortal sin.

Join me tomorrow for a look at what you, at any management level, can do.

Flickr image: Mr Fogey

I’m an article sender. I constantly send articles to family, friends and clients. Some because they are of direct interest to the recipient and others because they are interesting, fun, weird and, occasionally, bizarre. Today I thought I’d share a few of them with you.

The first two I just saw and although I know I’m a digital dinosaur I wonder if I’m the only one who finds both these articles tending to the bizarre.

The first really is bizarre; I do not doubt that the condition is real, but I still find nomophobia—the fear of being without one’s phone to be bizarre.

Characterized by an overwhelming fear of being phoneless—so much so that it results in physical symptoms, such as panic attacks, dizziness, sweating, nausea…

The second doesn’t really qualify as bizarre, probably more a glimpse of the future. One in which parents substitute a tablet or smart phone in place of investing themselves in their young kids—exactly the way a previous generation of parents used television only portable.

…it’s not really because you want to stimulate his little brain or nurture his grasp of gadgetry.  You do it to shut him up for a few minutes.

How do you take your caffeine?  Do you sip, slurp, gulp or just inhale it? Don’t laugh, the last option is now available.

Caffeine inhalers are a byproduct of the energy drink craze and began emerging on scene at the peak of the drink’s popularity.

Of course, inhaling doesn’t quench your thirst when it’s hot, so an enterprising entrepreneur created caffeinated water.

This final link is definitely weird, possibly bizarre—unless you have a billion dollars and plan to live to 125.

Because he is 87, it makes him an unusually robust specimen [He has never been sick], which is what he must be if he is to defy the odds (and maybe even the gods) and live as long as he intends to. He wants to reach 125…

Enjoy your weekend!

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

Chuck Palahniuk has an interesting, if cynical, view of life; in fact, much of it is too cynical for my taste, but not all.

Palahniuk said, “Everybody here thinks the whole story is about them. Definitely that goes for everybody in the world.” That attitude makes navigating one’s own existence almost surreal, especially if you are of that small minority (like me) that doesn’t see themselves as the center of the universe .

He also offers a good explanation for today’s need to stay connected, “People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone.” How sad, because when all is said and done you remain alone until you make friends with yourself.

Decades ago I embraced the attitude that people can’t move emotionally further in one direction than they had experienced in the opposite, but Palahniuk words are much more elegant, “The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly.”

Many humans seek immortality by building great artifacts, but it is only in the intangibles that they will find it. “The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. stone crumbles. wood rots. people, well, they die. but things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.”

There is nothing wrong with the human desire to live on; to be remembered long after death. “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” A worthy goal if kept in perspective. While the something we create doesn’t have to be world-changing, it is best if it is positive, although many negatives live on in infamy and offer immortality to their creators.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

If she is looking over your shoulder at a room full of potentially more interesting people, she is ill-mannered. If, however, she is not looking over your shoulder, but into a smartphone in her hand, she is not only well within modern social norms, but is also a wired, well-put-together person.

Obviously, I’m not well-put-together.

Meet me and you’ll know instantly that I am the proud possessor of antique manners, as opposed to the digital kind.

• I pay attention to people while talking with them, as opposed to scanning the room for someone more interesting, i.e., useful.
• I really listen to what they are saying.
• I don’t text as we talk.
• I don’t check email, make dinner reservations, surf, etc. during our conversation.

This is as true when I talk on the phone as when I attend a networking event or social function.

The body of brain research that proves the only thing multitasking achieves is to make you incompetent grows daily.

It’s just not how our brains were built.

My ‘old-fashion’ focus has many benefits chief of which is people remember me weeks, months and even years later when all we had was a 30 second conversation.

Think about it.

When was the last time that someone gave you their completely undivided attention for 30 seconds or longer?

When was the last time you gave someone yours?

Fickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/

First a note; I’m sure you noticed that I’ve started linking the people I quote to a Wikipedia reference. I did it after an irate email that scolded me because the writer didn’t know who David Brinkley was when I quoted him a few weeks ago and found it difficult to look him up, (I would have understood if he hadn’t known Donald Kendall.) hence the links.

Now on to today’s Quotable Quotes.

At times I wonder if there is anyone else who feels the way I do about cell phones, social, automated checkout, and other technology incursions. Well, it turns out I’m in good company (full credit to Business Week for all but two of these quotes).

Start with Ray Bradbury, who wrote some of the best science fiction about machines, but who now says, “We have too many cell phones. We’ve got too many Internets. We have to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

And before you chalk Bradbury’s attitude up to his age, consider what 26 year old Keira Knightley has to say, “I hate the Internet. I find it dehumanizing to constantly check e-mails, or social sites that have become fashionable.”

Edward Albee highlights one of my main peeves with those who constantly stare at those tiny screens, “I walk along the streets of New York and I find people bumping into each other, bumping into things, and they have these things in their ears or in their face. They’re not seeing anything of the real world.”

Drew Barrymore, also not exactly in her dotage, sees the same problem, “Ironically, with all this ‘We’re now more connected than ever with technology’ I don’t think we’ve ever been further apart.”

I am also fed up with those who claim that technology is the answer to the world’s ills. Jimmy Carter thoroughly debunks that idea, “Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing… you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-thirds of the people of the world.”

Esther Dyson adds another nail in the ‘Internet is good’ coffin, “Few influential people involved with the Internet claim that it is a good in and of itself. It is a powerful tool for solving social problems, just as it is a tool for making money, finding lost relatives, receiving medical advice, or, come to that, trading instructions for making bombs.”

Finally, a special thanks to George Clooney, who sums up all my feelings about Facebook in one graphically descriptive sentence. “I’d rather have a rectal examination on live TV by a fellow with cold hands than have a Facebook page.”

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/symic/4323860889/

I am a digital dinosaur.

I don’t Tweet; I don’t do Facebook; I don’t own a cell phone; I refuse all the invitations to join yet another 2.0 platform; I’m mostly inactive on LinkedIn, not and open networker and wonder, when I think of it at all, how to politely disconnect from the people whose invitations I accepted before I knew better;

I spend my time working on Option Sanity, the new product my company is launching; I write; I spend time with friends, in person and on the phone; I read, not “worthwhile” or business books, but for pure pleasure; I play in the dirt in my garden, which, after seven years, is actually looking good to me; I cherish my brain.

I know many people who are wired; who can’t imagine life without their smartphone; who have hundreds, if not thousands of friends; who totally freak out at the idea of not being connected 24/7.

What about their brains? Is the cumulative effect of all that information and connectivity positive or negative?

A series called in the New York Times this week offers a look at much of the brain research being done on this subject and it’s not a pretty site.

The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In (This one really horrified me—the mother, not the kid.)

The boy, who Ms. Im estimates was about 2 1/2 years old, made repeated attempts to talk to his mother, but she wouldn’t look up from her BlackBerry. “He’s like: ‘Mama? Mama? Mama?’ ” Ms. Im recalled. “And then he starts tapping her leg. And she goes: ‘Just wait a second. Just wait a second.’ ”

Finally, he was so frustrated, Ms. Im said, that “he goes, ‘Ahhh!’ and tries to bite her leg.”

Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price

They [scientists] say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive.

An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and Forgetfulness

Some experts believe excessive use of the Internet, cell phones and other technologies can cause us to become more impatient, impulsive, forgetful and even more narcissistic.

More Americans Sense a Downside to an Always Plugged-In Existence

Younger people are particularly affected: almost 30 percent of those under 45 said the use of these devices made it harder to focus, while less than 10 percent of older users agreed. … One in seven married respondents said the use of these devices was causing them to see less of their spouses. And 1 in 10 said they spent less time with their children under 18.

And if the articles aren’t enough to make you rethink your wired state, here is a review of Nicholas Carr’s new book ‘The Shallows’: Is the Net Fostering Stupidity?

Americans now spend 8.5 hours a day frenetically interacting with their PCs, TVs, or, increasingly, the smartphones that follow them everywhere. In the process, writes Carr, we are reverting to our roots as data processors. “What we’re experiencing is, in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization: We are evolving from being cultivators of personal knowledge to being hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest.”

It would be unfair not to offer up a bit of hope with all this.

Ear Plugs to Lasers: The Science of Concentration

Or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing information, accentuate the positive and achieve the satisfactions of what Winifred  Gallagher, author of “Rapt,” a guide to the science of paying attention, calls the focused life.

It’s a lot of reading on a summer weekend, but the information will impact you and your kids for the rest of your lives—whether you accept all of it or just a tiny bit.

Darn! I knew I forgot one link. It’s in one of the articles, but here it is directly.

Test How Fast You Juggle Tasks

Test Your Focus

Test How Fast You Juggle Tasks

Image credit: pedroCarvalho on flickr

This week has been about communications, so I thought it apropos to include some good quotes about communications.

I love communications and communicating, whether it’s a good book, a stimulating conversation or when something I write really clicks. I think Anne Lindbergh summed my feelings up best when she said, “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”

Do you ever feel that real communications is a dying art; and if not dying, severely incapacitated? Well over a hundred years ago Charles Dickens said, “Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.”

Before Dickens was even born Joseph Priestley said, “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.” I guess he was prescient.

Erma Bombeck said, “It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of supersophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.” That’s because so many people are enamored with their own voice.

Effective communications requires real effort; as Russell Hoban warns, “After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?”

Sadly, we live in an era that proves the truth of Josh Billings words, “Most men had rather say a smart thing than do a good one.”

Changing this paradigm can only happen if each individual makes a conscious choice to do it; not through promises posted on a Facebook wall or tweeted to a mass of followers, but one person to one person.

Let’s get everyone as hooked on good communications as they are on coffee.

Sxc.hu photo credit to: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/547050

The oddity of the human animal (including myself) never ceases to make me scratch my head. I thought I’d share some examples with you so you, too, could marvel at the human thought process.

Art does not imitate life—just ask any newly minted lawyer what real life is like in comparison to ABC’s new series, The Deep End. Although I can empathize with any new grad in this economy, I can’t say I’m sorry that law firms are shrinking and attitudes are changing—it’s about time.

“What has come to pass is that a law degree is not a ticket to a six-figure salary and a six-figure bonus,” said Matthew A. Feldman, a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York.

Distracted driving is a hot topic with many states weighing in with new laws—but those on foot are no different.

Examples of such visits [to the emergency room] include a 16-year-old boy who walked into a telephone pole while texting and suffered a concussion; a 28-year-old man who tripped and fractured a finger on the hand gripping his cellphone; and a 68-year-old man who fell off the porch while talking on a cellphone, spraining a thumb and an ankle and causing dizziness.

The best way to sell your product and company these days is to go green—or at least be perceived as such. People seem to embrace any suggestion of green and this apparently extends to churches, which is good. Our poor planet needs all the help it can get.

A study released in December by the Barna Group, which more typically studies trends among evangelicals, said that older, mainline churches faced many challenges but that their approach to environmental issues was among several areas that “position those churches well for attracting younger Americans.”

In a lighter vein is the subject of passwords. In spite of every horror story of identity theft and trashed computers people cling to their simple passwords. And I do mean simple!

According to a new analysis, one out of five Web users still decides to leave the digital equivalent of a key under the doormat: they choose a simple, easily guessed password like “abc123,” “iloveyou” or even “password” to protect their data.

Finally, if you’re in LA some Saturday and want to something a bit out of the ordinary, you can spend $65 for a 12-stop, two-hour journey learning about “the history and origin of high-profile gang areas and the top crime-scene locations” in South LA, but book early because it sells out quickly.

Alfred Lomas, 45, a former gang member and the creator of the tour ($65, lunch included), said this drive-by was about educating people on city life, while turning any profits into microloans and other initiatives aimed at providing gang members jobs.

Image credit: pedroCarvalho on flickr