SNP Communications

Millennial Dilemma: Cellular Communication 24/7

By Stephen Flynn

Since I entered the corporate environment not long ago, I’ve been fighting the same fight as so many others of every generation have before me — to find the right balance (or perhaps separation depending on point of view) between my personal and professional lives. There is one difference between my experience and the experience of those before me: I am a Millennial. I wouldn’t be caught dead without my Millennial Swiss army knife: my Smartphone.

Let’s say I wake up at 2:00 a.m. (just an hour or so after my average bedtime I might add), and I want to look up the definition of Circadian Rhythm Sleep Disorder on Wikipedia. Bam! Fantasy baseball trade? News ticker? Change my Facebook status? Bam, bam, bam! Done.

Without my phone closeby I’m missing a limb, I feel slow and ignorant, lost and detached from the world. I can’t help it. All day every day it stays right in my pocket, and — like a small dog desperate for the attention of an owner who is perhaps just a little too lonely to sleep alone — it permanently owns a cozy spot next to me in bed.

I digress.

For those of you who have to wake up really early for work to give a big presentation, there’s really no way to get a good night’s sleep, right? Recently, before a 5:30 a.m. presentation for an overseas audience, I woke up at 3:30 a.m. from the troubled sleep that I was so desperately fighting to maintain.

“What time is it?,” I wondered.

How much longer could I sleep? I quickly found my phone and looked at the time. Man, it’s a good thing that Smartphone was sleeping well within arm’s reach. And it’s a good thing that unlike the alarm clock of the pre-Millennial bedroom, my alarm clock gets work email. So it’s 3:30 a.m., and guess what:

Outlook Email (1)

To look or not look: a difficult question to answer having abruptly awoken from a dream of playing a high-pressure game of red-rover with some gregarious but surprisingly competitive Unicorns. Well look I did. News from clients overseas:

‘We need to make some changes before we present.’

Do I go back to sleep? Try to get another hour and maybe if I’m lucky even jump right back into that game of red-rover with my mythical equine friends? No way. Not with that work monkey on my back. I’ll tell you from experience, when you lose focus during a game of red-rover, Unicorns will take advantage of you every time. Conclusion: no more sleep.

So, out of bed I rolled and off to work….at 3:45 a.m. Edit I did, and the presentation went well. I wish I could say I learned a lesson and that I’ll change my ways, but what is a Millennial like me supposed to do? I’m glad I saw the email, and it really did save me from a big-time flop, but do I ever again want to go to work before 4 a.m.? No, certainly not. But go back to a dumb phone? Fat chance. Darwin would spin in his grave.

Sent from mobile device.

Filed under All, Digital Natives.

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