It may be a token gesture, but at least it's a start for a public service accused of taking the insidiously convenient BlackBerry to the extreme. On the other hand, it provides another example of how many of us abdicate responsibility for our own lives.

In other words, if you have to be told to turn off the damned thing to restore the separation of personal time and work time, it ain't gonna make any difference.

A couple of weeks ago, Richard Fadden, deputy minister of Citizenship and Immigration, dispatched a memo to his staff asking for a BlackBerry blackout between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., as well as several other "operating rules" to ease stress and restore work-life balance in a world in which the term "24/7" has become a cruel joke. HR expert Prof. Linda Duxbury applauded the move and spoke in local media about how much the convenience of the BlackBerry has become a crutch that makes it almost impossible for many bureaucrats to unplug.

Ms. Duxbury and others have long criticized how the convenience of technology as a means to make our lives easier has utterly backfired. Those of us who run around all day with various electronic devices to stay in touch know this is true. At some point, it becomes such a challenge to simply keep abreast of all the information flying back and forth in cyberspace there is no time to just sit back and think, assimilate and apply it all in new and productive ways. Instead it's all about reaction time, and as Ms. Duxbury says, there's a big difference between fast answers and correct answers.

But if this is such a systemic problem, is a head office directive going to make any difference? Regardless of workplace expectations, it's still the individual who chooses to surf the inbox over dinner, or pick up that BlackBerry when it buzzes while reading a bedtime story to little Jimmy or Sally Mae. It's not like we don't know there are messages coming into our inboxes, messages being left on our voicemail, after we pack it up for the day and head home, but it's out of sight and mind. We don't worry about it until we come into work the next day. Or at least, we didn't worry about it so much at one time.

But then the pager came along, followed by the cellphone and all those devices that fit into that generic BlackBerry category. Now work is in your face in a way that can't easily be ignored. Blame it on the device all you want, but it pokes at something basic to our human nature. We have to know. When there's a message coming in, we have to fight to ignore it. How many times have you or someone you know been unable to let a phone ring until the answering machine picked up, even when if wasn't a convenient time to take the call?

That same eccentricity is at play here. In last May's edition of our semiannual Ottawa HR magazine, we ran an excerpt of Cool Down: Getting Further by Going Slower. In that book, author Steve Prentice explores the stresses that have come to plague the 21st century working professional and how the more we try to do, the less productive we actually are.

"The problem with speed," he wrote, "is that it generates 'busy-ness' as opposed to business. It brings into being a frenetic level of activity that blinds the observer to actual progress and productivity. The constant need to 'keep up' leads to a false sense of achievement, so that while we actually think we are swimming, we are actually just treading water."

Mr. Prentice made the quite valid point that this foible of human nature is not unique to the digital age, but digital technology has driven it to crisis levels. And we can't blame technology for this, because doing so is an abdication of responsibility for our own choices. He goes to make the astute observation that:

"We're the only creatures that regularly troll through personal timekeeping systems, afraid equally of deadlines and empty spaces."

Now, is that a problem that lies with technology itself, or rather, with how we allow those fears to dictate what we do to manage our time?

We need to figure out how to break the habit and learn to use technology responsibly, and that begins with an individual decision that cannot be dictated in a memo. Only then will these devices serve us as the convenient time savers and stress relievers they were intended to be, rather than the other way around. And quite often, making that transition from madness to sanity begins with having the guts to keep the world at bay and the line drawn in the sand with one simple word:

No.