As many of you know, we just recently returned from a 3 week European holiday. This is a picture of me and my Father at a restaurant in Athens. I think my wife took the picture because she had just been giving me crap about checking my emails and working. I imagine I was involved in commenting to my business partner about a deal that we were struggling to keep on track at the time. (notice the girl behind me…she was from San Jose, CA)
I suppose it is easy enough to tell who is having the better time in the picture??? Needless to say, my dear old Dad does not have a phone that receives e-mails, and is just barely text message compliant.
This trip was different than some of our previous overseas journey’s in that most tourist restaurants now have Wi-Fi for free to entice people to eat there. The upside of this in combination with my iPhone, was that I did not have to visit one single internet café, as in the past. Which was always a contentious situation for me and my wife, and I can attest, it is not usually a great spot to hang out. (she did not check a single email the entire 3 weeks)
I know it is not very realistic for most business people to just leave every piece of technology behind when we go on vacation, but it does seem prudent to limit our exposure to our gadgets, and give our time more completely to the people we are traveling with. The folks at home tend to figure things out one way or another. And after a week or so you might even stop automatically reaching for the phone every time you get in the car!
Practice presence and have a great summer!
