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> There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an age of 4g connectivity everywhere. You can. Get rid of your phone. Most of us don'

> There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an age of 4g connectivity everywhere. You can. Get rid of your phone. Most of us don't have a job that actually requires a phone, and it's really as matter of your work willing to take advantage of the fact that most of you won't push back when pressed. You can take advantage of the fact that they won't pay for you to carry a phone. I finally got rid of my phone about a month ago. Started off deleting all the apps, stopped carrying it. Finally, took a roofing hammer and smashed it to bits. I may purchase a pay-as-you-go "brick" and leave it in the trunk of my car for emergencies, but otherwise I will never have an internet connected device that I carry on me at all times. It's needless for most of us. You can talk about how convenient it is to have things like Maps at all times, and to be sure that is convenient. Just requires a little forethought and planning. Don't give into the FOMO, smash your phone.

shoo 9y ago
Well done. Perhaps a middle ground is having a dedicated work phone, and then turning that off when you are not on the clock and not rostered to be on call.
- mikelward 9y ago
  Android Work Profile can help with this. You can turn off the work profile, which completely disables your work account, apps, and notifications. https://support.google.com/work/android/answer/7029561?hl=en https://support.google.com/work/android/answer/7029561?hl=en
hulahoof 9y ago
A bit less extreme, but I put my phone silent mode about 6 months ago and never set it back. I was probably checking it more for the first month to be honest, but after breaking my own and others expectations of a swift reply I find it much easier to respond at my leisure. Edit: communication at work is expected over internal IM and email, and my previous solution was to not give out my number. I feel this works better. After all, if I'm 3 hours late responding and it was dire I would have been contacted via other means.
verylittlemeat 9y ago
No phone? We need team players at this company. /s
- technion 9y ago
  You joke, but I've never worked in a place I didn't hear this literal sentence.
lostcolony 9y ago
I've never configured Outlook on my phone. If they absolutely -have- to reach me, they can text or call me. The beautiful thing about that is it makes it difficult, but not impossible, to reach me. No one on my project has my number. They know who does. That person knows to respect my time. They also know I don't always pick up. So there's multiple levels of filtering that means that if it arrives, it arrives as a voicemail, and is something so important it requires attention ASAP, -and- is something that can't be addressed by someone else (since if it is, it'll be faster to find someone who can figure it out than to reach me). So it's a very small class of problems that actually get through, and they're usually the ones I -do- care about.

shoo 9y ago

Well done. Perhaps a middle ground is having a dedicated work phone, and then turning that off when you are not on the clock and not rostered to be on call.

mikelward 9y ago
Android Work Profile can help with this. You can turn off the work profile, which completely disables your work account, apps, and notifications. https://support.google.com/work/android/answer/7029561?hl=en https://support.google.com/work/android/answer/7029561?hl=en

hulahoof 9y ago

A bit less extreme, but I put my phone silent mode about 6 months ago and never set it back. I was probably checking it more for the first month to be honest, but after breaking my own and others expectations of a swift reply I find it much easier to respond at my leisure. Edit: communication at work is expected over internal IM and email, and my previous solution was to not give out my number. I feel this works better. After all, if I'm 3 hours late responding and it was dire I would have been contacted via other means.

verylittlemeat 9y ago

No phone? We need team players at this company. /s

technion 9y ago
You joke, but I've never worked in a place I didn't hear this literal sentence.

lostcolony 9y ago

I've never configured Outlook on my phone. If they absolutely -have- to reach me, they can text or call me. The beautiful thing about that is it makes it difficult, but not impossible, to reach me. No one on my project has my number. They know who does. That person knows to respect my time. They also know I don't always pick up. So there's multiple levels of filtering that means that if it arrives, it arrives as a voicemail, and is something so important it requires attention ASAP, -and- is something that can't be addressed by someone else (since if it is, it'll be faster to find someone who can figure it out than to reach me). So it's a very small class of problems that actually get through, and they're usually the ones I -do- care about.