That’s How It Is regulars would have caught my contributing story which was published a week ago. Now I’ve said a lot in the past about phone etiquette and how one should roll if one truly wants to live the holiday. So I put together a final say on the matter, we you might find useful when attempting to educate your friends and colleagues. And you can show them the comments building up under that article at the same time – mostly in support!

“The Holiday” really is all there waiting for you – it’s only you holding it back. And your friends – but you need to show this to them.

Look, I say this is the final say, but you know it’s not really. I”m not going to stop until society (or at least the people in my world) gets this at least semi-right.

YESTERDAY’S UNANNOUNCED VISITS ARE TODAY’S UNEXPECTED PHONE CALLS

I was given a guided tour of the 24.com offices a couple weeks ago and was eventually led into a massive triple volume room, probably half the size of a rugby field, occupied by all of their staff. You could look down into the middle, which held a massive open-plan area with desks and staff at the bottom. Then, on each level above that (also looking down onto the aforementioned open plan area) were more desks and workers – with each section comprising of a different division (Food24, Health24 etc.).

My friend Bruce walked the one way and I walked around the other. Then, about mid-way across to the other side, something quite mind-blowing suddenly occurred to me. I looked up at Bruce who was now on the opposite side.

“Bruce,” I said, using a very natural conversational tone and volume.

He looked up from where he was and said, “Yup?”

“How amazing is that?” I asked him.

Then is suddenly dawned to him, “Oh.My.God!” he whispered..

From across a room of hundreds of people below and all around us, we could hear each other perfectly! Before that point we had not realized that there were no phones ringing and no people talking in the entire room – a room full of media people and journalists!

Or, more to the point, we hadn’t quite pin-pointed the rare feeling of serenity and calm we were experiencing. In a work environment, no less!

WHAT is the first thing people mention when they talk about a holiday? When they talk about that trip overseas or that trip to the islands or a beach resort.. They talk about turning their phones off, don’t they?

“I can’t wait to get out of town, turn off the phone and just sit back and relax!” is the usual pre-holiday anthem. The phone is the number one vibe-killer of our time and it’s incredible that people haven’t found a way to reduce its use in their everyday life. This is a combination of both social pressures and habit.

I have a mantra which goes, “Work is a sideline, Live the holiday” which I have lived-by for a number of years now. The motto itself can be interpreted in many ways. You can take it at face value and aspire to lounging on the beach all day or, like me, you could interpret it as being able to work but not realize that you are working. You might deem what I do as “work,” but to me I’m just doing what I genuinely feel like doing. A ‘hobby,” if you will. “Hobby” by definition is “An activity or interest pursued outside one’s regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.”

By that very definition I most certainly am living the holiday. And, seeing as I am on holiday, should I not be subscribing to the prerequisite? Bloody right I should! No phone calls, thank you very much! A few years ago I turned my back on private numbers and unknown calls, and today I pretty much shun all unexpected or unplanned calls – a trend I see being followed more and more by people around me. But we’ll get back to that in a second.

WHEN I was a kid we had a phone at home and if there was no-one at home to take a message, you simply wouldn’t know that someone had tried to call you. Answering machines came out later which fixed that dilemma but, before that, you could very often miss a friend and vice-versa, for days! It was because of this that it was not completely out of the ordinary for someone to arrive at your front door, unannounced. Do YOU remember the days when people used to visit unannounced?

But then technology improved and answering machines were installed in homes around the country. The need for unannounced visits was reduced and, over time, it became rude to show up at people’s houses uninvited. Technology had improved our lives by allowing us to escape, without the fear of random people arriving out-of-the-blue. Yesterday’s unannounced visits are today’s unexpected phone calls.

What people seemed to have missed when it comes to technology is that, although the various advancements have made us more accessible, they have also virtually completely eliminated our privacy. And, what’s more, we seem compelled to conform to those social “norms” which dictate that we answer our phones. And that’s why I’m telling you right now – fuck that.

Text messages and email are now on nearly every cellphone and, instead of replacing most phone calls with this new technology, people are misinterpreting it as an optional “if-you-feel-like-it” extra.

At a very basic level of this ideal, and a great way to illustrate where we are heading, is an example I give about phone number requests. If you are looking for someone’s phone number and you know that I have it, you have absolutely no right to phone me for it. A phone number request should only be done via text message. Why should you have the right to interrupt whatever it is I am doing and rope me into a bit of preamble bullshit banter – all just to get a phone number? Fuck you. Requests for phone numbers now come in the form of a SMS. Fact. Try and get that right amongst your friends and you will immediately feel a slight sense of being on holiday – certainly more on holiday than you felt before. And I’m only getting started!

In this modern day of emails and digital media, a massive portion of our conversations are either referencing things online, or requests which require the one party to follow up – virtually always in the form of email and online. You need a document signed? Sure, I’ll scan it and email it to you. You want to buy that book I told you about? Here is the link to the online store to buy it from. You want to see the photographs from our overseas trip? Here is an email with the photo gallery. You want to discuss those figures for that deal we were discussing? I’ve attached the spreadsheet to this email. You want a favour from me? Cool, email all of that to me and I will look over it when I find a moment.

All of that said, 90% of MY phone calls used to end with an email request. Why then don’t we start with en email and avoid having to put everyone’s day on pause, just to discuss what we are going to email anyway? That’s what I’ve done and I now get a maximum of two phone calls a day, which are either expected, or planned.

Let’s chat again about “private” numbers and “unknown” numbers on the cellphone. There is a growing number of people out there who refuse to answer unknown numbers – you might be one of them. This is the first step towards freeing yourself and understanding how easy it is for you to live the holiday. People don’t answer unknown numbers because of the fear of the unknown. For me, it’s a no-brainer. Why for the love of God would I risk answering a call that could be from anybody? That’s pretty much as close as you can get to modern day Russian Roulette! It could be an annoying sales pitch from the bank, it could be an old friend who isn’t really a friend and has arrived in town. It could be someone annoying who should be emailing you etc etc.

Why risk all of that?

People are starting to ignore private numbers because they want less stress and they yearn for the holiday. But then what happens? They (the secretive people on the other end of private number calls) leave a voicemail, which becomes number 37 in the queue on your cellphone voicemail and you have to go through the rest of the messages just to get to that one. How rude! Especially if it is something they could have SMS’d!

Bugger that. I changed my voicemail which now states, “Sorry I couldn’t take your call, either I don’t know your number or I’m busy doing my own thing. You can leave a message if you want but I probably won’t get it. But if you REALLY want to get in touch, send a text message or email me at editor@2oceansvibe.com.”

See what happened there? They were given a set of rules. You will be amazed how a simple voicemail alteration will change your life. I don’t even have a ring on my phone anymore. My friends and colleagues email and text me, and any calls that come through go straight to voicemail and the caller ends up texting or emailing me.

Not that friends and colleagues can’t phone me – it’s just that there is a time and place for that. And it’s not about being a bad person – I will and I do extend them the exact same courtesy when I need to get hold of them. If I must chat then I will SMS first, requesting a time that suits them for a chat – invariably it is a little later as they are busy doing something at the moment. I’m sure they would answer if I called, but, given the option, people generally prefer to finish whatever it is they are doing at the time! Try it – you’ll see..

24.com’s offices are clearly where everything is heading – it’s their job to embrace exactly that. Unfortunately the rest of us are still trying to kick old habits and don’t realise that the feeling of being on holiday is more accessible than you think. When cellphones first came out it was cool to have one and cool to spend your time yacking on the thing. Not anymore, my friends – it is now, officially, uncool.

I received a call as I was writing this article. It was a cellphone number that I didn’t recognize. I ignored it and carried on writing. Then I took a break from writing (when it suited me) to make a sandwich. I glanced at my iPhone and noticed that the person had gone to voicemail, heard the instructions, and left a text message. I read the message which was from a friend of a friend – asking something about buying a new iPhone. I wrote back, giving the name and number of a friend who works at Digicape, who should be able to help her.

Then I went back and finished this article.

See how easy that was?

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