This is what you get when you're ultra connected to email and phone 24/7, with devices such as a Blackberry or iPhone. For most of my working career, one of the things people have consistently told me they liked about working with me, has been my rapid responsiveness to communication. The good in it is real-time progress and higher output per minute. The bad is you become prone to non-clinical ADD, not paying divided attention to those who matter most, and you increase your time to stress.

To treat this disease, it's best to leave your phone alone sometimes. For example, I had an important business partner in the office all day last week. For the first time since I can remember, I left my phone in my office while I went to a meeting in a nearby conference room. It allowed to keep undivided attention and focus on my business partner while eliminating distractions. I've got to believe I soaked up so much more and contributed so much more than I would have, had I been checking my phone email and texts during the meeting. Sounds obvious, but seldom practiced.

On the home front, I typically carry my phone around until bedtime, then I charge it on my nightstand. The other night I was checking emails and one of my investors had some heavy discussion points I needed to tend to. This email-a-thon went round and round for hours, breeding animosity, stress, disease and ultimate distraction from my duty as a parent and husband. Bad outcome for all involved... So the next night I tried leaving my phone in the car when I got home from work. Within an hour of being home, I was grilling some fish, talking with my wife, shooting some hoops with my son, etc. Then after everyone went to bed, I played my bass for a while and wrote a chapter for a book I'm working on. The next morning I read emails from my phone at the gym, and had answered all the important ones before even breaking a sweat. The uglies in my inbox waited until I got to work to start dealing with them. What a night and day difference in quality.

The moral of the story here...don't confuse real-time progress with real-time stress. Don't let the convenience of being always-on suck the life out of you!

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