I’ve done it. I’ve taken the rad­i­cal step to take ‘them’ off. Not just hide ‘them’ … I deleted ‘them’. ‘They’ve’ gone. And I can hon­estly say I feel bet­ter for hav­ing done it.

I’m talk­ing about the email, Twit­ter and Face­book appli­ca­tions I’ve had on my Black­Berry for the past few years. I had become a slave to the con­stant mes­sages, Face­book updates from friends in all parts of the world and the lat­est ‘So-and-so is now fol­low­ing you…’ on Twitter.

The red flash­ing light indi­cat­ing I had an email always caught my eye in meet­ings. It became a seri­ous distraction.

‘I won­der who that might be from?’ was my con­stant thought.

‘Maybe some­one needs me to help them out on a project or sign up for one of my work­shops … what if I didn’t respond until later? I bet­ter just check … ’

Dur­ing meet­ings I’d skil­fully read the email (with­out mak­ing it too obvi­ous). Nine out of ten times it wasn’t urgent … but I always used to think, ‘What if it was?’

Then there was the con­stant vibra­tion I used to feel in my pocket dur­ing walks down office cor­ri­dors, in the street en route to the sta­tion or to the cycle cen­tre to col­lect my bike. The inter­rup­tion was inces­sant. Some­thing had to change.

Even at home I would arrive at the front door and was greeted by my three young chil­dren and wife. Invari­ably another email would come through no sooner had I arrived. I imme­di­ately focused on the mes­sage rather than my prized fam­ily. I was home, but wasn’t really there. The Black­Berry dom­i­nated me. It ruled. It said ‘jump!’ … I said ‘how high?’

It all came to a head the other night. I said to my wife, ‘I’m going to do it …’

‘Do what?’ she asked.

‘Get rid of email, Face­book and Twit­ter on my phone …’

‘Oh, I’d like to see that …’

She didn’t believe I’d do it. So I chal­lenged her. You see, she had also become a slave to hers. I gave her my old Black­Berry a year or so ago and she too had devel­oped an addic­tion. So I chal­lenged her: ‘Why don’t we both do it? Let’s can­cel our email plan and get rid of Face­book and I’ll even delete Twit­ter.’ It felt as rad­i­cal as say­ing ‘Let’s get rid of our sec­ond car …’

So a few evenings ago, I boldly walked into my mobile phone provider’s shop and proudly said, ‘My wife and I want to delete our email plans from our Black­Berry phones.’ The guy behind the counter looked at me as if I was ask­ing for some­thing he’d never heard before. He main­tained his com­po­sure and said that would be no prob­lem. He brought up my account and after a few clicks of the mouse can­celled our email access and said we’d save around $60 each month from now on. I thanked him and walked out the shop a free man!

The Face­book and Twit­ter appli­ca­tions were also deleted that night. Unless you’ve been a slave to instant mes­sag­ing, Face­book activ­ity and Twit­ter posts, this act may sound for­eign. But if you have, I chal­lenge you to do what we did. Be ruth­less. Get rid of them. You’ll be all the bet­ter for it.

© 2009 Bren­ton Nicholls