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Comment by nbrogi | Hacker News Reader

I tried :-)

But then people started saying that I was either not reachable or I ignored them.

I didn't get rid of my cell phone on purpose, just used the fact that it broke to not get another one, and it just works great for me.

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Without a cell phone you are still unreachable, so how exactly is this solving that issue?

The real problem here is that the people contacting you do not respect your desire to not be on-call 24/7. In my opinion, this lack of respect is good enough reason to not feel bad about ignoring them. Put your phone on mute and stop letting inconsiderate people push you around. Or just continue not having a phone because that works too.

The problem is that clients would get mad saying I ignored them.

I probably didn't care about them, but I do care about keeping good work relationships.

I'm totally reachable. I have email, and Messages. The thing is just that I can decide when to check them, and they're less invasive.

I can't upvote this hard enough. If someone is calling me, their name pops up on the screen. What if I don't want to talk to them? I don't answer! If they leave a voicemail? I'll check it when I feel like it, and if it's not important, I won't bother with it. This article does hit one nail right on the head though, and it's the real source of the problems - when did people forget that cellphones serve them, and not the other way around?

I'm surprised people (especially clients) react better to you not having a cell phone at all than to you not always answering.

I always make sure to disable the auto-away setting in all chat/IM programs so it always shows me as online, and then I explain to everyone that since the program is not smart enough to know for sure that I am available, I prefer to avoid the confusion.

With phones I follow a similar philosophy: I make sure to avoid answering it all the time, I let it run out of battery, or in Silent mode, or I leave it at home, etc. and I'm very vocal about having done so.

I don't know if this makes me antisocial, but it seems to work fairly well in removing other people's expectations (except with my dad heh).

I think that for them the situation improved.

If they called me to see if I knew their password and I didn't help them they'd feel stuck, now they just go in their inbox, find it themselves, and go on with their lives without emailing me, which ultimately doesn't piss them off.

Before, I just couldn't handle the amount of calls and sometimes I just wouldn't even call back if I thought it wasn't important, then people would have to call me back to finally try to solve their problem. Now, I always reply to my email, so in this case, too it's better for them.

That sounds like a business opportunity. If people want to call you for hand-holding then charge them money for it. On-call support contract - business hours or a more expensive 24-hour option. Make it a "best effort" contract so you aren't liable if you can't answer the phone.

This is the same approach I use. I set the expectation that my cellphone is NOT for you to reach me 24/7. You can sure try but I reserve the right to not answer for any reason. My phone is normally on vibrate or airplane mode.

"My phone is turned off and I normally check voicemail once a day around 5pm. The best way to reach me is ..."

Works for me. I use the standard iOS features to make sure important callers (eg. the children's school) can get through.

The trick to getting this to work is to be consistent. Don't tell people you are not reachable and then pick up their calls.

Hmm. I would think there's a way of setting reasonable expectations for return calls. I would think a client that requires a same-day response ought to be paying a lot of money for that privilege.

Returning family calls, on the other hand...

I absolutely agree, setting expectations is key. But I can also see the point of needing the extra push to modify your own behavior. I don't have a TV. It died and I didn't get a new one. I have found new ways to watch TV, but now I cannot idle away hours in front of HGTV. It sounds ridiculous, but the few mouse clicks it takes to watch a program versus the single click of a button is all it took to create a difference between mindless and mindful behavior.

I really believe it's also cultural.

I'm in Italy, and it wasn't just family and work, but all kind of random people... People don't like to use email, here, so they call you for anything (like your bank, landlord, whatever).

Also, then don't trust email: the thing that annoyed me the most was that the rare times they chose email, they would also call me to let me know they had sent me an email, to make sure I'd read it...

Go figure.

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