Digital Common Sense

Here’s a story that caught my eye, in part because I’m typically guilty. I’ll plead guilty to having taken a laptop on a cruise. Cell phone too. I’ve made business calls from Royal Caribbean off Catalina or Ensenada. I suspect I will again later this year on an anticipated Alaska cruise.

I wrote some time back about being a hyper-connected individual. It’s not without negative aspects

Vacation packing list: sunscreen and briefcase

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Attorney Dennis Kerrigan just spent a week rising at daybreak to answer e-mails and field conference calls for several hours a day before eating breakfast with his family.

He says it was a relaxing vacation.

Memorial Day, the unofficial kickoff of summer holidays in the United States, may be near, but that doesn’t mean Americans will be kicking back and relaxing. Instead, U.S. workers keep working while they are on vacation, experts and studies say.

More than a third of vacationing Americans check office e-mails, telephone voicemail and respond to all their messages, according to a recent poll.

A mere 2 percent said they were “unreachable” while off work, said the same poll conducted by FPC, a New York-based executive search firm.

Another survey showed Americans spend an average of more than five hours answering e-mails and checking telephone messages on vacations, which are typically less than a week long. That study was conducted a Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products, Day-Timers, Inc., a unit of ACCO Brands Corp..

This weekend, I won’t be hyper-connected. Heading up Mt. Rainier to a spot that is sans signal of any kind. At least it was last year.

Tags: connected, vacation, work habits

Filed by Ken at 6:06 pm under General