I always try to remember how fortunate I am, that I enjoy my work. I reckon it’s fair to say that many (most?) people take a job that they find tolerable in order to make a living. When you can take pleasure in work, the work/life balance seems less of an issue.

I do work the odd late one in the office and have personal projects outside of my day job (starting to sound like a raging workaholic now), but I do my best to balance that with commitments to other things in life – partner, family, friends, Wii (kidding!).

There are two main reasons that I try not to *over* do it:

1) It can bring diminishing returns in terms of quality of work – tiredness alone can cause you to make mistakes and turn a few minute’s work into an hour. I think it can hard to be focused and inspired when you’re feeling a bit burnt out.

2) There comes a point where the correlation between hours put in and productivity/results/success stops scaling. Time after all, is a finite, non-renewable resource. Eventually *what* you’re doing becomes more important than how many hours you spend doing it. Bill Gates doesn’t work a 10,000 hour day

As an iPhone fan I know what you mean about the appeal of being always connected. Knowing when to ignore all those little demands on your attention is a skill I’ve not yet perfected. The noise in our lives will only intensify in future – everything from work to notifications that some person you haven’t seen since school is eating a sandwich. Prioritising and selectively ignoring is becoming an essential skill just to cope with it all.

I hope someone confiscates the battery from your Blackberry while you’re on holiday!