How my iPhone frees me

As I’ve bounced around Florida the past ten days from one relative’s house to another, visiting with family and old friends and former colleagues, I’ve realized something rather revelatory. You know that iPhone in my pocket, the one that I can’t seem to go more than a few hours without removing from said pocket, the one that I’ve been carrying around with an external battery pack just to make sure I have enough juice to make it through each and every day of my trip? Rather than being a distraction during my quasi-vacation, rather than being a tethering cord that prevents me from ever being able to fully pull myself away from work, I’ve come to the realization that my iPhone has turned into something else entirely: the device that frees me.

Maybe it would be different if I worked for some big conglomerate and had a micromanaging boss trying to breathe down my neck all hours of the day, but as it is it’s really just me, the people on my team, and the people I do business with externally. Perhaps I’d feel differently if my phone was ringing all the time (is there any bigger distraction than a ringing telephone?), but the people who know me know that email is generally the most efficient way to reach me and get a swift response (think of the number of situations in which you can’t realistically stop to take a phone call, vs the number of situations in which you wouldn’t be able to type out a quick email reply). And I suppose I might feel differently if I didn’t love my work, but if nothing else I think everyone knows where I stand on that particular issue.

Here’s why my iPhone frees me: at one point during my trip, I went a full three days without so much as booting up my laptop once. And they were weekdays too. Once I finally did crack the laptop, to scratch out a long-ish article for the magazine that had been simmering in my head, it was right back to full-on work mode, just as sure as if I were sitting at my desk on a typical workday. But for those previous few days, my iPhone succeeded in keeping one my worst professional fears at bay, the worry that there’s an vital and time-sensitive email sitting there in my account that I’m not aware of, or that a quick check of something on a particular website would have clued me in to an opportunity that would be lost if I’d waited just a little longer. You see, it’s all about information and opportunity, and my iPhone gives me quick and easy access to both. If I’m sitting there watching TV with family at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday and I grow worrisome about some such scenario, all I have to do is whip out my iPhone, browse through my new email, hit up a handful of key websites, and three minutes later my iPhone is safely back in my pocket and I’m back to watching TV. At worst I missed a commercial break.

It’s not uncommon for me to receive an email from a publicist asking if I’d be available to do a phone interview the next morning (and if it’s a big name interview you’ve been trying to nail down, you don’t pass up the opportunity whether you’re on vacation or not). The other day an advertiser sent me a graphic that wasn’t the right dimensions, and spotting that and letting them know about it gave them more time to correct it. And believe it or not, Macworld Expo-related emails are beginning to trickle in already. Not all email has to be replied to instantaneously; in fact most of it doesn’t. It’s more about seeing it, being aware of it, replying to the few that are urgent, beginning to chew on thoughtful answers to the more complicated ones. And most of all I think it’s about the peace of mind of knowing that no one’s trying to reach me with something important.

For better or worse (mostly for the better from where I’m sitting), the days of phoning someone over every little issue, every little question, are over — at least in the world I work in. If every one of my emails were a phone call instead, I’d spend all day every day either trapped on the phone or trying to remember what I’d been working on before the last time the phone rang (and in fact, isn’t this exactly how much of the corporate world still operates?). In other words, fully distracted and largely useless. The trade-off of having nearly everything arrive via email is that you do have to keep an eye on it (no one in the business gets taken seriously when they take two weeks to reply to an email and then say “sorry, I’ve been traveling”). And with my iPhone in tow, keeping on top of that stuff is almost absurdly easy.

I think back and contrast this to as recently as two years ago, when a long trip meant pulling my laptop out at every stop, and then beginning the search for wifi. Those were the trips in which I never really did get to stop being “at work” for any length of time. But now? Piece of cake. My laptop is still never far from me when I’m traveling (I’m typing on it right now), and UPS finally caught up to me with my iMac the other day, and that’s a good thing since next week will be a pretty busy work week out of necessity (and yeah, I miss my work). But right now, my iPhone is saving me from being glued to the laptop, saving me from hunting for wifi, saving me from having to sit down for actual “work” sessions during a holiday week.

Thanks to my iPhone I’m fully on top of things, I know what’s going on in my world as it’s happening, and I’m not needlessly out of touch with anyone. And that’s what allows me to relax and enjoy my time off more than anything else. Happy Thanksgiving.