How has the use of Blackberrys and iPhones effected your work/leisure time?

My husband has his Blackberry attached to his hip until bedtime. Sometimes he has to sleep with it on his chest so he will hear it or feel it vibrate since he is such a sound sleeper. He is basically always at work now, even when he is at home. If they call during family or leisure time, family or leisure time ends or becomes Mommy/daughter time. I hate that damn thing.

I now have technology ADD. I cannot bear to sit in a waiting area and look around. I cringe at the thought of reading boring magazines. I need it like a junkie needs crack.

I have neither
when my husband was employed he had a crackberry as we refer to it here and its blinking light bothered me at night but he wasn’t obsessively on it so it didnt’ matter

It’s made it easier for me to do things on the spur of the moment, now that I have guides and map apps at my fingertips.

Because of it I have no leisure time anymore.

I no longer work for a corporation (I’m at a farm now), but I also teach at a college one night a week and carry about two freelance clients at all times. So I could easily be doing work all the time.

But I don’t. I simply exercise self-control. When I’m with my wife and daughter, it’s all about them. Calls go to voice-mail, eMail stays in the inbox. If they fall asleep before I do, I may check it and respond before bed, but that’s about it.

I spent too many years taking work home, working seven-days-a-week, constantly on eMail – and that was for a salary job (the farm pays me hourly). When I resigned from that job two years ago, I resolved to stop living that way.

And I LOVE my iPhone. My wife has one too. It makes things run so much more smoothly (everything synchs) – so we certainly take advantage of the benefits – you just have to avoid the pitfalls.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir its blinking light bothered me at night

That can be turned off or changed in colour, intensity, in software.

My wife, a couple of my daughters and I all have them. I turn mine onto private outside business hours, but my wife lives and breathes hers. She has to be reachable 24/7, infuriating as that is.

I use it to read the news, check weather, make airline booking, check arrival/departure times etc., as well as play chess and other online games. They are very addictive, hence the “CrackBerry” nick. It also has fifteen hundred songs and some video on it, so it has taken the place of my iPod as well. One good feature with ours, on business plan, is that we can chat 24/7 completely unlimited. That gets heavily used with all the girls and their mother on the one very long conference call of an evening.

I’m an iPhone user/lover. It’s made everything so much easier, and is a great help to me in running my business. I don’t think it’s taken away from my leisure time and has possibly enhanced it.

I don’t really use it for games or anything. Just a correspondence and information tool. And I am an information junkie. I like to think of it as my own little Hitchhiker’s Guide :]

@DarkScribe hey, that’s okay, he no longer has that job

I don’t believe in letting technology rule my life. I do not have a blackberry or a personal cell phone (although I would like to get one in the future for emergency purposes). I do have a work cell phone and I make a point of not answering it as soon as I leave the office. My employer knows my home phone number so if it is an emergency she call me at home. I would also not “allow” my husband to have his work life interfere with our personal life. Life is not about being ruled by work or technology, it is about the moments we spend as a family. I wish more people would acknowledge that. That doesn’t disregard the benefits of technology in any way but I just believe that we need to set clear personal boundaries for ourselves.