We finally got one. An email from a senior executive at a major American company with those golden words - "I check my emails at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. If you need me urgently in between, please call my office..."
We've been hearing rumors about the existence of these superhumanly disciplined people for months but had never actually seen the evidence. Believe us, in our upcoming book, Womenomics, the use of this technique is as common as spotting little green men on Mars.
We're convinced technology is the route to liberating women, and men, from the office. There's no need to sit at your dreary cubicle answering emails when you could be at home, in the park, at soccer, in the hairdressers, on your BlackBerry and your clients are none the wiser. Those 4 inch long, shiny, blinking bits of metal are the key to our freedom.
And we confess we are both full-fledged members of BlackBerries Anonymous. We are hopelessly addicted. We sailed past "out of control" a good while ago.
And we're not alone. We've spoken to professional women who, when they get up to go the bathroom at 3am, take a quick peek at their inbox. Others, whose kids have chucked the offending item out of the car window in frustration. Yet more who admit their BlackBerries are becoming their best friends.
We all hate it when people check their PDAs over dinner. It's sad when parents have their fingers glued to their keyboards in the playground. And chats with your Mom on the phone aren't quite as focused if you've got one eye on your emails. Not to mention that trying to concentrate on a big-picture work project is impossible when you're also constantly checking and responding to emails all day.
Plenty of studies even show that constant email checking is not only bad for our productivity, it's bad for us! Researchers in Scotland found the need to instantly respond to emails is a major source of stress. Scientists in London discovered in clinical trials that trying to work while checking emails temporarily reduces your IQ by ten points (smoking a joint, by the way, only produces a four point temporary IQ drop - so log off and light up, you'll be smarter.)
Some people in fact argue that the freedom we win away from the office is lost if the office starts intruding into our free time. If we're available by email, and expected to respond to email, 24/7, then is that really any better than being stuck in the office for a regular 8am - 7pm day?
But here we disagree. We think the trade off IS worth it. We'd rather be able to get out the door and pick up our kids from school, even if that means keeping our BlackBerries turned on and checked. And we make a point of sending our bosses emails with quick updates and suggestions when we're working from home, sometimes just to show that we may be out of sight but we're still in touch and on top of things.
The solution is finding a way to harness the freedom this technology allows us while limiting it's seductive pull on our lives, like our brave senior executive is doing.
So here are our five Womenomics rules for make technology work FOR you, not AGAINST you.
1. It's your day off, your date with your spouse, a weekend at the beach, a walk in the park, dinner with friends - leave your BlackBerry at home. Go on, just try it. At least once.
2. Try separating your cell phone and your PDA. That way you can leave emails behind but still be in emergency contact for friends and family.
3. Really can't resist checking your BlackBerry in the middle of the night? How about recharging it in the baby's bedroom - nothing like the risk of disturbing a sleeping infant to deter you from midnight email surfing. No baby? At least recharge it as far as possible from your bedroom - the extra steps may deter you.
4. Turn off incoming alerts on your PDA, at least that way you won't hear that neurosis inducing ping every time you get a new email.
5. Do what our impressive executive does: set time limits for checking your inbox. It'll be hard at first but you'll get used to it and so will all those people who receive your auto-responder. If there's a real crisis they can always use that old fashioned technology -- the telephone.
And, congratulations to Kathleen Matthews, EVP of Communications at Marriott, for being our impressive email star.
(And you should know that we will be responding to comments only at the beginning and the end of the day.)
Follow Claire Shipman and Katty Kay on Twitter: www.twitter.com/http://twitter.
The electronic leash is choking us.
-Don't pee and peek.
-Don't sip and send.
Good job, ladies!
Sue@SpeakerSue.com; Blog: SpeakerSueSays; Twitter: SpeakerSue
Email is out. Collaboration is in.