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EWeek is one of the many journals I subscribe to. This week, I ran across an article by Scott Peterson that caught my eye; he claims that some of us need to step away from the network:

For the vast majority of workers, a little disconnected time 14really disconnected 14could do them and their co-workers a world of good. The trust shown in them would allow underlings to experience a little more responsibility than they're used to getting and perhaps open up new opportunities for productivity and growth for everyone on the team.

Anyway, I made a conscious effort to leave my laptop and PDA behind on my vacation. I have brought them along in the past, rationalizing that I could at least keep my mailbox clear of spam. But there would be no phone line in the cabin we rented, and the nearest Starbucks was more than 60 miles away in Green Bay. I did take my cell phone but quickly found out it was useless anyway (thank you, T-Mobile). The closest I got to the Internet was the horrible screech of a 56K-bps modem from a computer in a nearby lodge. I thought, briefly, about checking my mail but fought off the urge. By the end of the week, I felt I had experienced a real vacation, rather than just time away from the office.

I haven't been truly disconnected - on vacation or otherwise - in quite awhile. The problem is explained nicely by Ted Leung:

So, you can disconnect. But when you get home, you'll have over 1000 mail messages and an even larger number of RSS items to slog through

That's why I grab email and do some filtering while I'm on vacation - the pile of stuff to be sorted on my return would just be too big otherwise. I pay a lot less attention while I'm off; I tend to sort the things that will end up needing attention and ignoring everything else - but that's easier to do on the daily load of mail than it would be after a week. I'm just not mentally prepared for the blizzard that would confront me if I left email unattended for a week or two.