Working in the online world does offer its benefits, mostly that you are not necessarily tethered to a location or a time. In my former life as a teacher, this was a very welcome adjustment. What proves to be the most difficult is the ‘always on’ mentality. Clients expect it, friends expect it, hell even I expect it. So when I come home to Sydney, I rarely get an extended period of time off as I’m still logging fairly extensive hours at night. I’ve tried to force myself to simply step away from all my connections but aside from a 1 week trip to Spain last year with only minimal activity, it’s mostly been pretty tough. Having your own business certainly doesn’t help but I have a feeling it’s becoming pretty common around all industries. So I read blogs and get opinions on how to do it and most people i talk with haven’t seemed to be able to make that adjustment either. Some online articles seem to provide answers but it’s always difficult to tell how genuine they are. Still, I try and have achieved only partial success at this but a couple of positive steps I’ve learned, have had a pretty good impact.

Step away from the machine – instead of taking my lunch at the computer, I started going to the gym. Sure some weeks I have several meetings that go through the lunch hour but at least 3 days a week have helped my cause during working hours.
On vacation I still haven’t been able to leave the Bberry at home. It’s on my list of to-do’s.
Cull that information – it took me a long time to refine my list of RSS feeds as well as certain twitter and facebook activities but in doing so, I think I’ve cut a significant amount of time from my day.

Only a couple of small steps but they can have a decent impact. While it’s far from the answer, every little step seems to help.