Vacationing with a five year old is filled with constant motion, add onto this my constant need for action (cross country skiing a as much as possible each day), one finds it difficult to imagine how work or social media could enter into the picture at all.
Ten or fifteen years ago, one would wait until returning from vacation to share stories and pictures with friends and family. On this vacation we spent each evening reviewing our pictures on our laptop, posting some to Fickr for sharing with a close circle of family and on our respective Facebook pages for our wider circle of 'friends'. Our friends and family were able to keep track of our activities and comment on what they saw in real time. Some may argue what is the purpose, however we find this necessary given the speed that our world moves now, next week everybody will have moved on to something else, too busy to share on last weeks triumphs.
While this seems, and likely is, a frivolous use of a communication tool, we had an incident that occurred
proving Facebook to be an invaluable communication tool. While we were away a friend of our son's was airlifted from one hospital to another with a serious condition. A few years ago we would not have heard about this until we returned home, during this vacation we were able to keep in touch and exchange well wishes several times per day.
This was the most dramatic usage of social media and communication tools on my vacation, however there were several others. I was able to maintain my business network through the use of LinkedIn and Twitter. I even made a connection for two of my contacts for a job through Linkedin while we were away. I was able to keep up with the news through the electronic delivery of my newspapers, as well as the Twitter links and blogs I follow (through a great iPad app called Flipboard)
While I did keep up on e-mail, this was out of a need to maintain balance. This may seem counter-intuitive to work while on holidays to maintain balance, however I feel we need to change the definition of balance. Noted human resource consultant and Globe and Mail author Barbara Moses expresses concerns about these types of behaviour in her article on Work / Life Balance. Dr. Moses states that many of us find reasons to be busy and find reasons to remain in constant contact such as:
Fear of Disapproval
Guilty Conscience
Creating Busyness
Not knowing priorities
Lying about motivation
Dr. Moses has a well researched and important point, however this measures balance in the framework of the workforce in the 80's and early 90's when a pager was a luxury item. I feel that we need to define balance depending on each individual. Many of us have jobs that allow us to shift the time we actually work. While the work week might be slightly longer than it was a decade ago, flexibility allows us to work differently.
This prompts the topic, what is work/life balance? Has social media and electronic communication enhanced our ability to balance our work and family life or made it more difficult to attain balance. I truly believe that the ability to remain connected actually enhances ones ability to achieve balance in one's life. Information moves quickly in the world of Twitter and Facebook and these mediums can be used to enhance our sense of balance rather than erode a delicate sense of work/family optimization. The proliferation of mobile communication and social media allows one to define work boundaries for oneself rather than the traditional definition provided by the 3-1/2 walls of your cubicle. Examples such as Hotelling in the workplace and time shifting for personal entertainment allow individuals to change their personal habits to match their chosen lifestyle.
In the end it is more important how you feel about your balance rather than how others perceive your lifestyle. The big struggle is how do we get corporations in more mature industries to understand and equip their employees with the right tools to work inside of this new era of hyper connectivity.
So Friend me on Facebook, add me as a contact on LinkedIn, follow me on Twitter or use old fashioned e-mail you never know when I might be on vacation or working --- or will there be a defined difference in the near future?
