I recently shared an article on Twitter that I picked up from a friend south of the border. I was surprised to receive a bunch of negative feedback from my tweet! The article was about turning tech off on vacation. This hit home as I just returned from traveling for 10 days with my family. I realize that this is not the sort of topic I normally write about here, but it is near to me as it is probably the topic my wife and I *discuss* more than any other in regards to my work.

I don’t unplug. It doesn’t matter where I am, what day of the week it is or what I am doing a day doesn’t pass where I don’t check my email, Twitter and our internal Yammer. I find that I constantly have to defend this behavior as I am an early adopter of this lifestyle in my social circles.

Here are the 3 main reasons I don’t unplug:

• Momentum. So much of what I do, and the things that happen in the venture / startup world, are based on momentum. Momentum of getting an investment deal done. Momentum of a big product launch. Momentum of a press release. Momentum of a company landing a big customer. Momentum within your own team in pushing an agenda or initiative forward. You have to keep this momentum up or things don’t happen. Being out of the loop for any extended period of time, even a couple of days, can result in momentum, and the initiative, dying.
• Falling behind. Dealing with 100+ emails a day, keeping up on tech news and having team members or portfolio companies waiting on things from me means that after a couple of days it is almost overwhelming to try and get back on top of things. If I unplugged for a week and came back to 1,000+ emails and numerous request that required follow-up I don’t even know where I would start.
• Being able to relax. I don’t find it relaxing knowing that things are piling up as I ignore them. I find that when away on vacation, or even at home on the weekend, if I spend an hour or so to deal with email, news and fulfill any quick requests I can then relax for the day knowing that I am on top of things and the rest can wait. Once in a while during the weekend this will only take 10 minutes a day. I value those weekends.

A lot of people feel that technology has resulted in work following them 24/7. If you truly enjoy what you do I don’t think this is the case. Like everything, it just has to be managed properly so it doesn’t control you. A couple of good practices:

• Only check your “tech” once or twice a day and immediately respond to what you need to.
• Try not to inconvenience your family or others. Take care of it early in the morning or later at night.
• Turn off all buzzers, ringers, bells, notifications, etc. If you are in a situation where an emergency could arise make sure you have a defined way to be notified so you can turn everything else off.

I still need to improve in this area as I can be distracted by tech when around others. Ironically, it has not seemed to bother my wife as much recently though. She is too busy on her new iPhone to notice.