Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Are You Too Connected?
For the past seven years, I have grown a successful legal VA practice out of my Long Island based home office (or what I call my hoffice). I partially attribute my success to the e-zine I self publish: The Legal Connection (you can sign up here).
Way back in 2003, I wrote the below article for my ezine - about how I turned off my computer one day per week - or what I termed a "power down":
Did you know?
Doing a hard reboot sometimes does wonders for more than just your PC?
Those of us doing business on line stay connected with cable and DSL modems and often never shut down for days or even weeks at a time. Not only does this affect the temp files, cookies and other bits of data placed on our PC as various sites and software are accessed, but being "on" all the time can burn out cooling fans and other moving parts. A computer is a machine, after all.
Turning off the actual power is called a "hard" reboot. A "soft" reboot is when you restart your system pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del twice - which I only recommend if you have already waited at least five minutes after your screen/keyboard freeze and you can get no other keys to work (like Esc).
I like to give a little cleaning before powering down, just to get rid of all those bits and temp files. Before I hit the power button, I save all work and close all the active programs.
I then run a disk clean (double click My Computer, right click on C Drive (or the letter of your main drive), Properties, Disk Cleanup button). When you do so, your hard drive will assess which files should be deleted and will list them and ask you to confirm. When you do, it will take a few moments or several minutes depending on how much there is to delete! Once this process is complete, I turn off the PC by pressing the button hard enough to hear and feel a solid click. You have no idea how many people tell me they barely hit the button, providing an instant power down/up scenario hardly healthy for electronic equipment! Really, push the button with purpose and pay attention! ;)
I turn my computer off each Sunday afternoon after doing the above and running a virus scan and back up. I then do not power back up until 9 am Monday morning - refreshed and ready for business again.
By the way, I don't just think it’s just my PC which benefits from this weekly "power down" ritual! ;)
Although I have tweaked the power down process a bit by using an application called CCleaner to do the clean up of my PC, the actual ritual is still in place five years later.
This is because I found that powering off my PC is the only way for me to keep my focus off my business. I am sure I am not the only e-preneur who has difficultly NOT thinking about the myriad of projects or open ended items they could be tending to at any given moment.
With the power off, there's no excuse for me to even walk into my hoffice to "check" anything. My family is thrilled, I'm more relaxed and my electronics and keyboard get a day off too!
Why I bring this all up is because recently I came across a New York Times' article entitled: I Need A Virtual Break, No Really by Mark Bittman. A professed techno-addict, Mr. Bittman discusses his journey in finding balance in our highly connected world. He concludes:
I would no more make a new-agey call to find inner peace than I would encourage a return to the mimeograph. But I do believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life — or at least my version. Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, I experienced what, if I wasn’t such a skeptic, I would call a lightness of being. I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stopIf you find yourself reaching for your BlackBerry or e-mail enabled device more than once every 15 minutes or if you are constantly checking e-mail during times that no one would expect you to be at your desk, you could be opening yourself up to health and the other dangers of being over connected.
Read Mr. Bittman's journey or use the power down ritual I outline above to help you gain some control and perspective!
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