Exchanging ideas to create the well-being advantage

With the summer holidays approaching, most of us are looking forward to switching off for a couple of weeks…….but does that include your Blackberry and mobile phone too? The advent of PDA / Blackberry technology enables us to take our work around the world with us, and while this has improved communications and flexibility (sending an email from a train would have been unthinkable fifteen years ago!), it also brings risks and challenges for us all.

The standard advice I give to people is to try to keep the use of this technology during holiday periods to a minimum – however important you think the matter is - because it’s important to have ‘real‘ time off, where you truly disengage from everything to do with work. However, I often come across people who push back against this with a different argument.

They tell me that switching their blackberry on 2 times during their holiday for only a short time (and being disciplined about it), might, for some workaholics, actually helps them to relax while they are away. This may seem counter-intuitive – but having discussed this with several people I’ve started to see how this could work… for some.

Firstly, for those who worry about things going wrong while they’re away from the office, and feel they are not ‘in control’, taking a quick look at the Blackberry can alleviate a lot of anxiety. It can enable them to go back to enjoying their time with their families with 100% of their attention. Secondly, if there are people who rely on you back at work and you can ‘unstick’ or support someone with a short email, this may relieve stress for co-workers, improve results or avert a potential major problem you’ll have to deal with on your return. And finally, the pressure of the first few days back in the office may be relieved, because you have already seen most of your emails and considered their content so that it’s one less thing to deal with.

I must emphasise that I’m not advocating this approach for everyone – it is absolutely fine and probably very sensible to say to yourself “I will not think about work even once during my summer holiday”. But for those who don’t want to do this (or can’t), there are options as long as you don’t start working all day every day. Ultimately, it’s down to each of us to decide how to get the most out of our holiday time for ourselves and our families – the measure of whether you’ve got it right, is whether you go back to work feeling refreshed and having spent some quality time with the people that matter to you, your family and friends!