Taking a break from e-mail - and surviving

A connectivity holiday. John Halamka, chief information officer of CareGroup Health System, wrote an essay for his blog that could have been titled "What I Didn't Do on My Summer Vacation." During his two-week vacation in Yosemite National Park, he took a "connectivity holiday."

From August 8 to 12, I was on the John Muir trail, 50 miles from the nearest cell tower and had no ability to connect to email, the web, voice, etc. I left all my devices in the car.

When I returned to Tuolumne Meadows, I turned on my Blackberry, downloaded over 1,000 messages, and used a variation of my email triage criteria.

If the email was a CC or FYI, I quickly read it and deleted it without responding. If the email was about a product or from a vendor, I deleted it without reading it. Post vacation, I'll have plenty of time to review products. If the email was from my staff asking me to help with a project or budget issue, I responded. If the email was from a customer containing a question or complaint, I responded.

Each day from August 13-22, I used this same technique. The end result was that I sent about 10 emails per day. I did no phone calls.

When I reconnected to a network on August 22, I simply highlighted the thousands of email in my inbox and pressed delete. It was liberating.

My ability to send 10 emails a day and keep the peace while on vacation raises the issue: Have we created an email culture that is so overwhelming that we need to spend hours a day just answering email? Maybe a bulk delete - the equivalent of declaring email bankruptcy - is something I should try episodically as a way of cleaning the slate.
geekdoctor.blogspot.com

A glimpse of the future.
Venture capitalist Bijan Sabet writes that an August vacation with several of his nephews - ages 9 to 16 - offered some insight into how the younger generation uses its cellphones. Among his observations:

Holy cow do these [kids] text a lot. I always knew this was the case, but watching it first-hand is incredible. They put to shame the most addicted VC & BlackBerry [users]. It's fast, furious, and seemingly constant.

They know which of their friends use the same carrier or not. They care because "in network" text messages are free and out of network isn't.

They want a low-cost iPhone.

All of their parents have at one time or another paid a very large bill for text messages.

My oldest child is nine years old. Wondering when we will give her a mobile phone. Still deciding that one.
bijansabet.com

EnerNet adherents. Computer networking pioneer Bob Metcalfe coined the term EnerNet earlier this year to describe an Internet-like approach to solving the country's power generation and distribution challenges. Now, it seems EMC Corp. executive Mark Lewis has joined the bandwagon, in a post that argues that neither presidential candidate has "thought through the real strategic ways in which our government can truly help to enable an energy-independent US."

I suggest that the real secret to advancing a successful energy policy is the construction of the energy internet - in many ways an initiative similar to creating the Internet. As we build the capability to intelligently distribute power from more sources and across greater distances, more companies and even individuals will be able to generate power and become a part of the overall ecosystem. The wider we can make the grid (energy internet), the more we can balance the peak loads and reduce our dependence on "surge capacity" which is always more expensive and usually has the worst environmental impact.

There are many parallels between energy and IT and many places where I believe having the right policies, infrastructure, and technology initiatives could dramatically accelerate our ability to become energy independent and generate the bulk of our energy from renewable sources.
marksblog.emc.com

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