BlackBerry Bank Holiday
// September 7th, 2009 // Comments Off // BlackBerry
Two pieces of coverage caught my eye over the Bank Holiday Weekend, both with an interesting perspective on the world’s leading PDA.
Interviewed in the Sunday Telegraph, founding chief executive of Tullow Oil, Aidan Heavey was asked when he had last taken a holiday. Here’s what he said:
“It’s all work. I don’t relax. Haven’t you heard of a thing called a Blackberry?… I can’t turn off. I look at my Blackberry every 10 seconds. I check it when I’m going up in ski lifts and drive my playing partners mad by answering emails on the golf course. They’re the best and worst invention ever. They mean that you work 24 hours a day and you don’t get holidays. They’ve changed life.”
The second piece was from the US and featured Collete C. Young who has set up a company called ExecuMate which offers advice to domestic partners of top executives. Her advice to BlackBerry widows is as follows:
“As a spouse, you can’t say ‘Put that BlackBerry away.’ You have to know part of that life is they’re on 24/7.”
Both of these pieces are similar in that they appear to accept the inevitability of the 24/7 lifestyle and the inevitable intrusion of the implacable BlackBerry into life outside work. Of course, it need not be inevitable. With a combination of will, discipline and a number of pragmatic, simple steps, the BlackBerry can be retained as a convenient, labour-saving tool rather than something that ruins your life.
