July 27, 2004, 12:00 AM — I am just back from a two week vacation. Like last year, I decided to go
cold turkey on all things digital. No e-mail, no web browsing. Like last
year, I survived to tell the tale albeit with a little more pain this
time.
I found day 1 to be the hardest. Digtal-ectomy is like having this
nagging sensation that you have left your keys behind or the stove on.
The urge to go and check something - the web, e-mail, a WAP browser, an
s-expression is very strong.
From day 2 onwards into the rest of the first week, digital hot and cold
flushes and bouts of e-envy occurred regularly. I find it is becoming
increasingly difficult to avoid being reminded of the existence of
cyberspace. I look at a tourist map, alongside the other icons such as
"i" for information I find "@" denoting all the places where I can get
on the Internet.
Into the second week, I am in cruise mode but as the weekend approaches
my mind wanders to the pain that awaits me. How many e-mails will I have
accumulated in two weeks? How many blogs will I have to read to get back
up to speed. What have I missed?
At 64K, my e-mail winds it way down the copper wire like molasses in
Alaska. 987 e-mails! About 50% are true junk, 30% are - on closer
inspection - as good as junk, leaving 20% that I have to pay attention
to. The 80/20 rule strikes again. In the blogosphere, things have been
relatively quiet. The signal to noise ratio is, understandably a lot
better than e-mail as I get to be very selective about what I receive
from blogspace.
I have noticed something interesting in the psychology of feed reading
which is different from e-mail reading. In an e-mail application, I
invariably feel the need to "finish" my mail i.e. get rid of those
pesky "unread" icons. With blogs, I feel much less compelled to "finish"
my subscriptions in one session. I don't know why that it.
Now, approximately one day after I switched back on my computer after a
14 day hiatus, re-entry is behind me and I'm back up to speed. The
re-entry experience was worse than last year and I expect next year will
be worse still. Digital re-entry is becoming for me a little like the
drudgery and grief of airports. Something to factor into life's little
troubles and just get on with it.
When all is said and done, it is better than the alternative which is to
stay "always on". To bring your laptop on vacation. To hunt down the
coffee joints that have WIFI access. To pack a separate case for
electronic gadgetry to feed the digital lifestyle on the road. No
thanks.
As a computer geek, a vacation for me is more mental than physical. I
could go on vacation sitting in this very chair, in this very room. All
I need to do is remove all the digital stuff and pump up the volume of
pulp fiction and papaya juice. No matter how far flung, how exotic the
location, I simply would not be on vacation if I had a computer or
access to one.
One final remark about geeks on vacation. Over the years I have met and
worked with many programmers. One of the common attributes I see in good
problem solvers is the "overnight effect". Given a difficult problem,
they can go home, sleep on it, and come in the next day with either a
solution or an ingenious attack strategy. This is a largely subconscious
process and does not feel like taking work home, although it clearly is.
Last year - my first year of doing serious digital cold turkey on
vacation - I noticed that no wonderful solutions to problems popped into
my mind on my return. This year has been exactly the same. My
intractable problems of two weeks ago are my current intractable
problems. I'll think about them today and sleep on them this evening.
Of this I am glad. I take it as a sign that I mentally as well as
physically, left work behind me on vacation. A practice I heartily
recommend.
