Strategic Storyboarding

Sitting at the coffee shop. Sipping a fresh morning cuppa. Look around. What do you notice? That guy is on his cell phone. The girl pacing and waving her arms–looks like she’s talking to herself—but wait, she’s talking on her phone too. The woman at the window has just been paged. There’s a couple huddled over their laptop—plus he’s yelling into his cellphone.

Sound familiar? It’s been said that the major issue of our time is not connection. It’s how to disconnect. While you may be reachable 24/7, that doesn’t mean that you have to give up your free time and sense of calm to the phone.

Reclaim your free time. Use these ideas and adapt them as needed to suit your lifestyle. But, remember, you can find non-phone time. You deserve it.

• Don’t let the phone take over your life. Answer calls when it suits you. Make calls when you can give your call undivided attention.

• Group calls together. Don’t jump on and off the phone between other tasks. It’s much more efficient to have a calling time set aside.

• Make time to eat and drink. But not on the phone. The caller can definitely hear when you’re chewing and slurping. Same goes for checking email, using the computer, opening snail mail. When you’re on the phone—be on the phone.

• Use an answering machine. Switch off beepers, blackberries, cell phones when you don’t wish to be disturbed.

• Didn’t you get the message that call waiting is really rude? You’ll offend the person who is waiting, you’ll be short with the second caller and you’ll get stressed out. If you’re still using call waiting, please…cancel the service.

• If you’re in a meeting…turn your phone off. Be in the meeting. Don’t interrupt the meeting to take a call. Don’t use your meeting time to check your messages. Bet you already knew that.

• If you work at home, get an extra business-only line. Don’t answer the business line after office hours. If you worked in an office, you wouldn’t be there.

• Don’t answer the phone just prior to or during meals. If it’s really important, the caller will leave a message or call back.

• Don’t check for messages as the last thing you do at night. If there is an unresolved issue, it can wait until the morning instead of keeping you up all night.