February 2006 Successful Meetings magazine
Bzzzz, bzzzz. The BlackBerry buzzes around your kitchen counter at 10 p.m. like an agitated bee. Do you answer it—or smash it with a hammer, ending its urgency and your agony?
Some combination of cell phone, Blackberry, Treo, PDA, and laptop computer makes meeting planners mobile. These items keep you connected, productive, and even caught up on office gossip while sitting on a runway or resting in your hotel. And if you're trying to stay in shape on the road, you can even listen to e-mail messages on your iPod as you work out. MagneticTime's MT1 software (www.magnetictime.com, $40) converts Outlook and Word documents into MP3 files, so you can play them on your iPod, cell phone, PDA, or PC.
But what is not so easy is to turn such devices, and the stress they create, off. The phone calls in your car, the indiscriminate buzz that notifies you of every important and unimportant e-mail that arrives on your BlackBerry, are tugging on your leash—beckoning you to work at 3 a.m. Tuesday, or 5 p.m. Saturday. The damage isn't just emotional or psychological; "BlackBerry thumb" has become such a common ailment that the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale Resort & Spa now offers a "BlackBerry Balm Hand Massage."
Besides the off-hours annoyance, can you truly be productive in a business meeting if you mentally "check out" every so often to check e-mail on your mobile device? "People have a limited ability to multitask," says Jana Kemp, president of Boise, ID-based Meeting & Management Essentials. "Too often, they're not listening in meetings, and it aggravates people. The person before you should take priority."
Women in particular must dance on the blade of this double-edged sword, madly multitasking to carry on their work, social, and family lives. A recent Journal of Marriage and Family study by Noelle Chesley, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin, shows that use of cell phones can cause work worries to spill over into home time. Furthermore, the study says that among women, another effect takes place: Cell phones bring family issues into the office or on the road. The study showed that ongoing use of cell phones and pagers was linked to heightened psychological distress and reduced family satisfaction.
The only way to beat this stress is by setting your own personal boundaries. "If we get frazzled by the technologies, we're not being productive," says Kemp. "You must think you are the master of that tool; the tool is not the master of you." Some experts suggest creating a "time diary" to observe how you use your time and learn how to organize it better—and be aware that e-mail and the Web can eat up much more time than you think.
Kemp offers these strategies to deal with electronic information overload:
Recognize that every cell phone ring or BlackBerry buzz is not a crisis.
Checking your voice mail and e-mail once an hour is reasonable—not more.
Don't let colleagues set unrealistic expectations for you; if some folks respond to e-mails in three minutes, that's unrealistic for others.
Learn when to say no, and how. Prioritizing tasks protects the quality of the meetings you plan, and thus your reputation.
Give your internal and external clients a "one touch" way to reach you. Kemp hates voice mail that says, "If you really need to get hold of me, call my cell phone." Why? "It's an abuse; why must the caller chase your different devices?"
Limit the calendars in your life. "There are some people who use five or more." At most, Kemp says, you should have three: a team calendar for your work group, a personal calendar, and a project-by-project calendar with milestones and to-dos.
Recognize that e-mail isn't as good for problem-solving as live conversation.
Don't feel guilty. Learning to tune out the buzz is simply self-preservation.
SIDEBAR
Extra Bytes: It's All About Image
Planners often exhibit a strong attachment to the projectors they've learned to use for maximum meeting effectiveness. So when your projector poops out, must you throw it away, or can it be saved? Well, if the Projector Doctor can't help you, nobody can. If you need a new lamp, your projector is out of warranty, or you've lost your remote, the doctor is in for a wide variety of new and discontinued models. (866) 377-7327; http://online.projectordoctor.com