The EQ Journal Blog

Why have former student and really smart techie, Dan Cardamore, current student and really terrific industrial designer, Rob Sawatsky, horror writer Stephen King and University Prof and Broker, Bruce Firestone all given up on their cell phones?

My story is pretty simple really—one day about six months ago my youngest son told me that his cell phone wasn’t fully functional any longer since it had taken a swim in our washing machine in one of the pockets of his jeans courtesy of his Dad putting the jeans in there without checking for cell phones first. Stupid of me.

So I gave him mine.

Haven’t had one since.

My life has improved a lot since then.

First of all, I am not a paramedic, a heart surgeon, a police officer, a fire fighter or even one of those realtors who wants to be able to provide his clients with one hour response time. I am available to my clients six days a week anyway and I try to get back to everyone the same day or, at worst, the next day. If that isn’t good enough, they need to find another realtor or professor.

Now maybe that isn’t the right attitude and, if making money is the number one thing in your life, maybe you should stop reading this essay right now. But first maybe you should hear what Rob Sawatsky has to say.

“Rob here. I’d be happy to comment on the cell phone question. I’ve got one pro and three cons:

Pro – It’s great to have a cell phone so that you can call someone in an emergency or to save yourself some time finding a payphone and the number to call.

Con – Often times, I feel the need to preserve my personal space or escape from people in general. I’ve had the same conversation with anyone about cell phones when they call someone who doesn’t pick up: [friend] “UGH! Why doesn’t so-and-so pick up their cell phone? What’s the point of having one if they don’t pick up?” [me] “What if they don’t want to talk to you?” [friend] “That’s so rude!”

Con – Having a cell phone is like keeping the servants’ bell in your pocket that anyone can ring at any time and interrupt anything you’re doing. If you have it, it’s a waste not to use it, but if you use it people will be interrupting your meals, your conversations, and even your bowel movements. I don’t want to interrupt anyone any more than I want to be interrupted.

Con – The cost of a cell phone (from the vantage point of someone who’s not interested in owning a cell phone, thus has not researched them) is far more than the cost of a traditional land line. I pay $12.50 per month to talk on the phone and I don’t feel the need to pay or talk any more than I do now.

Essentially though, I don’t have one because I don’t need one. Once I need one, I suppose I’ll have to get one.

Hope my opinion is of use to your blog,

Rob a. Sawatsky”

I think Rob’s comment about having a servant’s bell in your pocket is exactly right. That’s the way it feels to me. My Dad, the late Professor O. J. Firestone, was a fine person and someone I had a great deal of respect for. But he was a slave to his office phone. I can’t tell you how many family dinners and conversations were interrupted by that phone and, frankly, I hated it.

It reminds me that we all spend way too much time on urgent but unimportant things and, a lot of that is because of the phone. And, in my view, cell phones make it much worse (and the Blackberry much, much worse. I actually had a Blackberry for three and a half weeks before I told our network guy to take it back and NEVER give me one again. Now my clients wanted five minute response time instead of one hour!)

I realize that I am cheating in a way—I spend so much time with my youngest son that my clients and family have figured out that by calling him on what used to be my cell phone, they can usually get me. Also, if we were closing an important deal (and aren’t all deals important?), I could always borrow one of the eight (!) cell phones I pay for in my famdamily.

But the Zen of it is that:

a) Who wants to be a slave?
b) Do you want to have some time to yourself on occasion?
c) Do you need some uninterrupted time to be creative, to problem solve and to think about the important things in your life—both personal and business?
d) Are you better off doing one thing at a time and doing that one thing really well?
e) Do you want to schedule every minute of your day or do you want to do what you can do well on any given day and no more?

OK, so what does Dan Cardamore have to say about cell phones?

“I was paying more for it than I liked to and in Canada cell phone plans are terrible, more on that in a sec. I was receiving more calls than making and most of the calls I received were ones I would have preferred not to get (can you work on ‘X’ now, ‘X’ isn’t working can you fix it, etc).

I tend to make plans with friends and family in advance over email rather than last minute trying to track down friends at grocery stores to make plans.

Essentially, it was my company’s leash on me, which I was paying for.

As far as cell phone plans go in Canada, they are terrible compared to the US. I like data, less interested in voice. In Canada data plans are absolutely horrible. There have been many comparisons done of the $59 US AT&T iPhone plan costing Canadians an equivalent $847 with _____ (large Canadian Telecom, Ed.). In addition there is the $6.95 service fee which you pay with all cell phone plans (in some cases that can almost double your cost) and this was to cover the gov’t. tax for air wave frequencies. Well, it turns out that the gov’t. stopped charging carriers for this about a decade ago but the carriers (all of them) still charge the public with this small print disclaimer that you would be charged this extra cost. There is a class action lawsuit against it now.

I’m hoping that Apple will force _____ (large Canadian Telecom, Ed.) to sell a decent data plan rate in Canada like they did in the States and the rest of the world. Or the new cell phone frequency that the gov’t. is selling now will introduce truly competitive carriers.

Dan”

Now I would imagine that Stephen King probably doesn’t like cell phones either—I deduced that from: a) the fact that he doesn’t own one and b) in his new book, CELL, everyone who owns a cell phone have their brains wiped leaving only base human impulses in place while everyone who doesn’t own one escapes this fate…

A friend of mine in construction told me one day: “Look here, Bruce, I don’t own a Blackberry, no sirree Bob, not me. Sheesh, I own something a darn sight better—I got me a Strawberry.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“Well, a Strawberry is this here spiral notepad where I write down everything I gotta do today and all the telephone numbers I got to call with this here pencil. See this pencil—it’ll write even if the temperature is minus 20 and my Strawberry, well, it don’t break and, if it gets a bit wet, I can still use it and, well, you know I never made a million in this here business but I saved six anywho.”

Dr. Bruce