The other day I saw a commercial of a leading mobile device manufacturer on television. It talked about how you can be connected all the time with your family and your offce because of the number of email accounts you can confgure on your phone. It supposedly gives you all that you want in life because of that.... Huh, really?

I have been using push mail for a couple of years now. But, there was a period of four months in between when I broke my Blackberry and had to switch to a basic mobile phone. Now I am back to using a smartphone since the last 45 days.

I have already started missing those four months of my life. I would check offce mail when I was in offce, and social network when I had the time and not when somebody else pushed a message at me using Facebook or Twitter.

Also, these are supposed to be productivity boosting devices, but have they really boosted productivity? Defnitely yes, as far as my work is concerned, but I genuinely think my stress levels have increased. I am always juggling between my professional and personal lives. I get personal messages at work and professional messages in my family time.

The same is probably happening to your employees. Their stress levels are constantly on the rise because of the constant pounding of information.

For most, it is an instant sense of achievement of being able to fnish a job even when they were doing something else – but we forget that the ‘something else’ that we were doing is being affected in more ways than one. The act of juggling may increase the quantity of work done, but certainly reduces its quality. To understand how much it can affect you, try speaking to two people at the same time and hold a meaningful conversation. You would not be able to.

To ensure that your employees are able to limit their stress levels, it would be great to promote some Blackberry etiquette in your organisation. It will not only help the users themselves in reducing their stress levels, but also help make the lives of others ‘physically’ around them simpler.

Here is a short, fve point Blackberry etiquette guide:

1. No rings please – Try and avoid using loud ringtones. Though you may love your ringtones, people around you may start hating you for it.

2. Not the headset – You must not use the headset during offce hours. It is quite funny to see somebody talking almost to himself. Even worse is when they switch conversations from speaking to a person to speaking into the headset without warning. Plain rude!

3. Mail filters – You can flter the mails that you get on your Blackberry. Depending on your profle only a small number of mails may require your immediate attention.

4. No talking when you eat – Didn’t our mothers tell us this? Do not talk or text on your phone when you are eating or in a social gathering.

5. Holster your guns – When you have a blackberry, you end up using it compulsively — avoid it. There is nothing more annoying that speaking to a person who is fddling with his phone.  

Not very diffcult to do, right? I am starting from today, are you?