also in professional:

	Top 10 employers you should know
	Why volunteering is worth your time
	Restaurant owners turn up the heat to succeed
	New technology trims wires, connects lives
	A profile in (young) professionalism
	Maintain workplace privacy in an all-access world

about
advertise
subscribe
contact
site map

advertisement

Bound by wireless
Trimming wires with new technology often makes for more connected lives

by holly noe

As part of a well-intentioned drive to promote balance between employees’ professional and personal lives, in 2004 the Ford Motor Company floated the decidedly unusual idea of inviting friends and family in to evaluate workers’ home “performances” as part of their job reviews.

“That’s a horrible idea!” cries Carina Spaulding, 23, an assistant editor and freelance writer. “That would be incredibly awkward–-–that’s like a total invasion.”

Moments later, Spaulding is digging a buzzing phone from her purse, and for a moment, is oblivious to what’s going on around her.

Young professionals struggle to balance their personal and professional lives every day, both aided and impaired by technology like cellular phones and the Internet.

Termed “perpetual contact devices” by researchers, mobile communication and information technologies are facts of life for young professionals, many of whom haven’t used landlines since high school and struggle to recall or imagine how even the most basic tasks got done before the Web. While evolving technologies pose new challenges for maintaining balance between professional and personal life, they also open up new ways to achieve that balance, both through integration and disconnection.

Spaulding edits for Coreweekly, a Madison paper launched in August 2004 that covers news, arts and entertainment for the capital city’s under-30 crowd. She also freelances for Wisconsin Trails magazine, headquartered in Black Earth-––work she says she could not do without the Internet and her mobile phone. “I have 600 minutes a month and I use all of them,” Spaulding says of her constant cellular companion. “The only time it’s turned off is when it runs out of batteries.”

Communication technology allows Spaulding to meld and shift her work and home responsibilities to less rigid hours and locations. She uses the same phone for both jobs, as well as for personal contacts. When not at her desk computer, she’s online wirelessly via a laptop. She fields personal messages during workday downtime, then heads home or to a coffee shop to do freelance work in the evening.

This leads to one type of balance, though not necessarily a comfortable one. “Everything gets jumbled around,” Spaulding explains. “I don’t feel like I really have time to myself until two hours before I go to bed.”

While Spaulding concludes her personal and professional lives are “pretty intertwined,” another young professional just across the city describes his as “pretty separate.”

Tyler Sachse, 25, is a corporate communications specialist at Great Lakes Higher Education, the student loan provider many UW System graduates know more intimately than they would probably like. In his comparatively traditional working situation, Sachse has found using technology to disconnect the personal and professional a more viable option. “I’ve always tried to be somebody who just kind of turns off work when I leave,” Sachse says. “I don’t like to spend time in the evening thinking about work because I’m going to be back there the next day.”

Like Spaulding, Sachse has a personal cell phone instead of a landline for convenience. Unlike Spaulding, Sachse says, “I usually turn my cell phone off when I get to work, then turn it on later and check my voicemail a couple times a day.”

To keep calls from encroaching on his time or privacy, Sachse makes ample use of phone features that allow him some control. For him, being able to easily screen callers lessens the guilt that compels many mobile phone users to pick up anywhere, any time: If a call seems urgent, he’ll answer; if not, he’s confident the caller will leave him a voicemail message.

Still, technologies like cell phones and email clients channel a constant, real-time stream of messages, most of them unimportant, but cumulatively producing a vague anxiety that the next one might be vital. This has led many to comment on the addictive nature of these devices, both in terms of manic checking and constant upgrading. For instance, some tech-junkies have dubbed BlackBerry mobile Internet devices “CrackBerries.”

“I am relatively dependent on having it,” Danny Carlson, 23, an accounting manager at Platinum Systems in Kenosha, says of his BlackBerry. “It definitely gives me an edge.”

Carlson says having a constant email connection and instant, complete access to his data frees up some of his time, for example allowing him to return emails during otherwise unused minutes spent traveling to appointments. “A normal person would have to wait a whole two hours to get that email,” Carlson says. “I can reply back almost instantly.”

back to top | next page ->

home | professional | recreational | practical | social
about | advertise | subscribe | contact | site map
curb magazine 2005: balance for wisconsin's young professionals