I’ve just got back from a wonderful two and a half week break in Vietnam (really recommend it as a country to visit – great people, great food, great places to see).
The trip and my return back to my ‘normal’ digital life had me reflecting this week on my digital use in a broader sense and specifically my digital use when travelling or vacationing.
Things have changed so much in the last decade for the holidaymaker or traveller. 11 years ago, I left Dublin to go travelling around the world for as long as funds permitted. Then, no-one I met on the road had a laptop or smart phone. On our short trip in Vietnam I met many backpackers doing the well worn South-East Asia trail and everyone had a laptop or smart phone. Whether you are travelling for pleasure or for business, it has become incredibly easy to take your digital life with you on the road. As a fan of location independent living, this is a huge benefit – being able to live and work wherever you wish.
However, there is a danger, especially when on holiday, of never really unplugging from the matrix.
So how can we strike a balance? Here are some suggestions based on my recent experience.
On previous trips abroad, I have refused to look at my email while I was away and have come back to an overflowing inbox that takes days to clear. For this trip, especially as it was quite long, I used my iPhone in wifi-enabled cafes or airports every few days to keep on top of things.
Accessing my email while away resulted in something interesting happening. I realised how much non-important email I receive on a daily basis. Subscriptions to newsletters that aren’t delivering value, Meetup notifications for events I rarely get to, and Linkedin digests for groups that I don’t interact with.
Why not use your time away to reflect on your email usage? Too often as our email grows so does the value we place on how important or busy we are. Travelling to a country like Vietnam where the people have suffered so much at the hands of others gave me a valuable perspective on how I am spending my time, realising that there are better ways I could be spending my day rather than ploughing through hundreds of emails.
Blogging
Come rain or shine, I have been posting on this blog every Friday for almost a year now. Being away for two Fridays posed an interesting dilemma – to post or not to post? Would anyone really notice if I didn’t blog for a couple of weeks?
Maybe not. But perhaps that is the wrong question. It doesn’t matter if no-one reads the blog while I am away. I made a commitment to myself and my readers that I would share a blog post every Friday. Having a regular posting schedule is something I always recommend to my clients for two reasons; writing and posting starts to become an ingrained habit, and your readers know when to expect your content.
So how to deal with this while you are away? Well, there are a couple of options. The first one is to ask fellow bloggers or colleagues to guest post for you while you are away. This is the tactic I used, asking simplicity expert Harry Mylonadis from design firm minimoko to write about information overload and creative coach Lucy Kyle for her thoughts on looking inside for what you need in business. I was thrilled with both posts and would definitely employ this strategy again in the future.
Another tactic would be to use the scheduling feature of your blogging platform whether WordPress, Posterous or Tumblr. Write your posts in draft form before you leave and set them to automatically post while you are away. Posterous even has an innovative autopost feature which will send your post out to your selected social services such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. You could also use the Scheduled Updates feature of TweetDeck or Hootsuite to do the same.
Social Networking
I made a conscious decision while I was away to not access any social sites. No Twitter, no LinkedIn and no Facebook. Facebook is actually banned in Vietnam so that one was easy! But staying away from Twitter was more difficult.
There is a fear with Twitter that if you are not tweeting constantly, you will be forgotten. And as someone who gets a lot of her knowledge and news from Twitter, there is the fear that I will be left behind. Being away gave some breathing space for these thoughts. Did it matter if I didn’t tweet for two weeks? What information would I really miss? I could have used the scheduling option to set up tweets for while I was away, but what would have been the point? I wouldn’t really be present; my tweets would be a ghost.
Feeling the pull towards Twitter everytime I looked at the iPhone also made me realise that I am a little addicted to Twitter and that I need to stay conscious of my usage. A useful lesson again in perspective.
How are you coping with your digital self on vacation this summer?
[image with thanks to brad.coy via CC]
