Drawing the boundaries

The internet has introduced a whole new level of communication into our society and our lives but it brings with it a significant danger.

What would we do without our internet and without our email today? For many of us it is a way of life. At one time, I used paper, read books, memos and kept a calendar in a book. Today, it would not be possible for me to manage with those tools and elements. So I, as an Internet Professional, like the so many rely on the web, email and yes, even MSN for almost all of my work during the day.

At the end of the day, I need to say it’s the best thing that ever happened to me (us). We accomplish so much more in less time than we could ever have imagined. We research and gather information that would never have been available to us in the past. But here’s the catch. At one time we worked in our offices or plants and when the five o’clock whistle sounded, we got up and went home. We were isolated from our work area and were able to live our home lives and not (for the most part) be troubled by what we had spend the majority our waking hours doing — work.

Today it’s differnet. We have VPN’s, Blackberrys, cell phones and home computers connected to the internet. The temptation is to come home, turn on the home computer and let it be an extension of the computer we were just using at work. That may well be fine in the short term, because maybe we can let the timer run and gain some billable hours, but in the long term, all we do is work.

We’re great entertainers in my home life and we have folks over quite often. One of the things I’ve noticed is that there are a group of my friends who simply cannot leave the blackberry in their pocket. Everytime an email comes in, they stop the conversation, pull out the blackberry and begin to respond to an email. The rest of us just look on and drool, because we’d love to be working just like the person who has the blackberry pulled out (Ok – I’m kidding). Others actually ask to use one of our computers to check their email — my comments are the same.

Here’s what I think. We develop software and webware that really works and that in the end makes your business life more productive, efficient, and ultimately more profitable! That’s what we do and what we do best. We do it so that our clients can have a life. Work hard, work well and let what we create for you make it even better and easier. But then take some time for yourself, your family and friends.

Computers at home are fun. We can research vacations, enhance our general knowledge, make an investment or two and of course play some games. Using them to take our work home and ignore the need for re-creation, though, does not seem to be a wise course.

You might think that I’m talking against what our company does and does best. Not at all. I’m saying we’ll make your technology work and work better than you can ever imagine. We’re doing that so that you can enjoy life as well. Of course if you want to work 24 hours a day… that’s ok too, but it’s not for me and I hope not for a lot of people in my life.