BLACKBERRY MADNESS-A DIGITAL SLAVERY.

  Official Calls and Emails After Work Annoy Women More than Men.

Blackberry Phone

Mary ping me when you are done with your meeting…. Said my friend and professional collegue Sarah;

Haba Sarah, are you learning how to talk? Which one be ping you, abi you don turn to ping pong?

Ha ha ha! Mary, are you for real! You mean you don’t know about backberry ping, that reminds me, I don’t even have your pin; please what is your BB pin?

"Abeg Sarah leave me alone" I said. At the end of our conversation I started craving for a blackberry. I wanted to own one but didn’t want to buy it, I just wanted a gift of a Blackberry. Ask and it shall be given, in my case I was saying it out loud that someone should give me a Blackberry and behold my friend Okung, promised me a Blackberry. I was so thrilled at this and the very next week when I travelled to the UK , I quickly shopped for Blackberry pouches. When I got back to 9ja, I called my friend Okung to inform him that I have bought six different colours of BB pouches, for the BB he promised me. He then asked me; Which of the pouches did you buy?

….. see me see trouble; Okung BB na BB oh! which one you dey sef - I thought Blackberry has just a single phone type. My friend had a good laugh and said to me, the BB I have for you is the curve 3 it is not yet in the market but my friend in Dubai will send it down – oh boy; my BB arrived a few weeks ago and I have a curve 3 BB phone and Bold 2 BB pouches. The next thing on mind mind at the time was to buy a Bold 2 but right now, I feel like throwing away this curve. Infact At this point, I feel like I deserved a big, big raise for even allowing the BlackBerry into my home. What I couldn’t understand is why some of my collegues weren’t in such a fuss. I don’t want any additional BB, because the one I have can be huge distraction sometimes, especially when I’m off work and at home with my family.

Now as I read through a study published in the March issue of the Journal of Health and social behaviours , I feel it may have something to do with my being a woman. According to research conducted at the University of Toronto, women feel much more burdened than men when contacted about work outside of normal business hours. Looks like that proverbial ceiling just got reinforced with double-pane glass.

The researchers surveyed more than 1,000 Americans to find out how often they were contacted outside of the office via e-mail, phone or text for work-related matters. As expected, they found that women who were contacted frequently reported higher levels of psychological distress than women who were not at their job’s beck and call. However, men who found themselves tied to their phones, BlackBerrys or laptops after work did not display the same amount of distress that women did, even though the men were more likely to be in touch with supervisors, clients and coworkers outside of the office.

Psychological distress is the scientific term for the effects of emotional pain, stress and mental conflict. Researchers measured distress in their study by asking participants how often they had trouble concentrating, felt like they couldn’t get motivated, felt tired or run down or felt like everything was an effort. In a nutshell, psychological distress is that feeling of being utterly overwhelmed, exhausted and worn down. Not such a great state for doing well at work or for feeling good outside of it

The more often work interfered with family and other important relationships, the more distress women felt. However, it wasn’t because they couldn’t manage all of their responsibilities. The study found that women could juggle their work and family lives just as well as men could. The reason women felt more put out is guilt. Even though women are just as much a part of the workforce as men these days, they still feel a stronger responsibility to tend to the home front, say the study’s researchers. This can make women feel like they’re not doing a good-enough job if they allow work to intrude on family time. It’s less about the logistics and more about emotional connotations of letting work seep into the home.

Maybe you can’t turn off your BlackBerry, but there are ways to keep work from impinging on your personal life. For instance, how you spend your weekends can greatly determine how you feel about work come Monday morning, and how well you do your job. If you feel like your job is sucking the life out of you, find out how you can climbing to the top (or just get throughthe workweek) without sacrificing your sanity.