On being unplugged!

This post was written in response to a LinkenIn post, wherein Inge Geerdens started the discussion with: "No, Thank You, I Don’t Want to Unplug".  There were a lot of different views, some helpful, some not so much.  Here is my response:


I have a tendency to, at least lightly, monitor what's going on at work while I am out, but I'm not sure it's healthy.  I completely agree that everyone needs to understand and own their own life and health, so I'll just speak for me.  Sometimes when I check back most often, I forget that, as one poster mentions below, the world will keep spinning if I drop off the face of the earth (unless I drop off because it stopped spinning, I guess).  In fact, gravity keeps working, and if I were to find a bright, shiny object and leave, or (heaven forbid) get hit by a proverbial bus, the company would continue on its way.


It seems the real answer to this for each of us regards the trade-offs we make.  When I check in on work, and if there is a melt-down, and I swoop in from vacation to fix it - or even to assist - what am I trading off?  Here are the possible trade-offs I see:


1) My family (spouse, children, others) might be taking a back-seat to something that I am showing them to be more important to me than them.  (Let's remove the "keep my job so I can keep feeding them" argument for now - see the gravity comment above).  People at the end of their lives keep telling us they wish they had spent more time with the family and friends, and less at the office.  I'm not sure why we think we'll be exceptions to that.

2) The empowerment that my colleagues and/or employees might need to solve this issue on their own.  Perhaps I have let employee development degrade to a point that I have taken all of the company monkeys onto my back.  Probably not a fun environment for everyone else who must defer to my self-perceived gifts.  Are they really not capable of solving the problem?

3) My time to focus on something entirely different for a few days or weeks.  Does staying tightly tied to my daily responsibilities prevent me from breaking out of my current work-focused mind-sets?  Will this prevent me from seeing different solutions when I return because I stay too close to it to see it clearly?

4) A proper sense of ego.  This really goes back to the other points, I think, but is it possible that I think I'm indispensable because my ego keeps telling me that?


This are things that we might consider as we determine how much "unplugged-ness" we wish to engage in while away "taking a break."  At the very least, as we consider how unplugged we are from work.


I hope we all have happy vacations this year, regardless of how unplugged you choose to be!