Ryan Majeau Design

We always hear how cloud computing can benefit the workplace. Access to all of your files wherever you go—on any device you have, at any point in the day. This is great and all, but do you really need to have access at all time? Should you?

Access leads to excess. Excess leads to stress. Stress leads to suffering (or the dark side? I forget how this goes).

The point is if you’re always plugged in, you can never relax. If you can’t relax, then you’re constantly under stress and ongoing stress is not healthy. Both physically and emotionally.

Gone are the days where you close your email, turn off your computer and leave work. Leaving work meant you actually left work. Not to see or hear of it again until the next morning. Sure you still thought about the IT support tickets on your plate, or rolling out a software update in the morning—but that’s as far as it went.

Now as you’re leaving the office your phone buzzes with a new email. On the way home you’re already replying. By the time you get in the door you’ve already sent 3 emails. You sit down, log into Gmail and continue to send a few more. Before you know it’s midnight and you should have been in bed a long time ago. Sound familiar?

You may have got a lot of work done, but at what cost? Everything has a price. As technology does more and more for us, we’re expected to deliver more and more. We can’t live without it, but are we really living with it?

Smartphones may be our best friends but we all need to take some tech-free time. Unplug from the net, relax and unwind—you’ll be happy you did. Try to keep work to business hours (I know, it’s a lot easier said than done). Good luck though. You can thank the cloud!