I actually logged my emotions daily from the inability to work at home, online transacting(banking, shopping, researching) and communicating with friends and family. My emotions ranged from relief, frustration, feeling lost, disconnected, withdrawals, angry, annoyed and generally irritated. Not having a connection required me to go in really early to work to potentially get connected and conduct the activities I needed to run my life that I could no longer do in the privacy of my home. Thus, there was less sleep and life was just inefficient–causing great angst.

Your blog got me thinking–not only about the lack of intimacy the net provides within one’s home but the impacts on one personally when it is gone. And in relation to your comments, I almost didn’t know what to do with myself–here we were to a new area, no TV (haven’t paid the mandatory TV license), few friends and no broadband! It gave me time to prioritise other areas in my life and sightsee in London–but the lack of connectivity really impacted my mood much more than I ever hoped or desired. It is almost disturbing to realise how integrated it is into your daily life and the “unidentified hobbies” you develop online.

Now that I am online–the work is to manage the addiction. Thanks for your insights.

The shame of it is, is that her father can be just as bad, if not worse at times and I have to force myself to step away from the computer.

Like you, my wife could see this much more clearly than I, why? … because I was stuck on the mac!! She demands family meals where we sit down together and communicate.

It’s the fact that you “tune out” when you get absorbed in the computer world, any other distraction, family or otherwise, becomes a real frustration. The more time you spend, the harder it is to step away.

I listen to the way my daughter responds when I ask her a question when she’s MSN’ing to her friends, or playing some game … and it’s too much like a mirror image of her “Grumpy Old dad” … not good.

So I’m right there with you JP …. Quality not Quantity. More to talk about when you do post.

In my Daughter’s case I use a tool called “ezOff” that enables me to turn her computer off at set times during the day and only allow her to log back in after a reasonable period of time. That was a hard fight at first but it seems to have worked and we ahve a better routine.

I haven’t quite figured out which tool to use on myself :) …

Fiddling with cell phones to set them up to reflect lifestyle needs when setting up is easier on a laptop is silly. Managing television mashup with a TV remote is near impossible when time is at a premium. Switching from TV to Internet content and back for both TV sets and laptops to pull what ever content is desired is a nightmare. Using a games console to send email is not possible.

There may be some ill considered competitive walled garden thinking behind this but in the end convergence has to be part of the mix.

That is not to say that vendors can package what they think consumers need. BT in the UK offers a broadband package that has all manner of bling. Stuff I don’t want (do I really need yet another email address, access to ghastly musak, or push content from magazines I have no interest in?) . In an era of user generated market, and social segments, second guessing consumer needs using conventional segmentation techniques is nuts.

It just adds to attention deficit and you are an example of the rebellion against it.

Its hard to make these ideas understood but perhaps one can make it easy for organisations that remain wedded to one of the ugly sisters of modern management – marketing:

Bling bad – service good.
Push bad – pull good.

Then we can all get on with the lives we want.