With a kid on the way, a two-income household becoming a single-income household, and trying to move toward a more balanced online/offline life, I cut the cord.
My job doesn’t require me to be able to respond to an e-mail within 10 minutes no matter when or where I happen to exist in time. I’ve been slowly converting my personal e-mail system from “always-on-sometimes-responding” to something closer to Merlin Mann’s “Inbox Zero“. In short, check e-mail less often, but when you do, do something with your e-mail. Why should we keep an e-mail in our inbox for days, looking at it multiple times a day?
There’s no reason. An inbox should be just that, a box of incoming items. Once we see an item, it’s no longer incoming. The message should be processed–replied to, archived, added to calendar or task list, whatever.
Adding to the e-mail side, I use my iPod Touch for keeping my calendar and task list on the road. Since I rarely have someone else add events to my calendar, syncing only when I’m in WiFi range is acceptable.
Now, start taking bets on how long until I go insane without the Internet everywhere.
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