August is supposed to be the quietest month…when the business community takes a collective pause for breath and big decisions are put off until everyone has returned from holidays.
I was starting to believe it myself this year. I noticed fewer phone calls and, arriving at work, was greeted by a handful of emails instead of the usual stacked inbox.
Then, last Friday at 23.16 I received an email asking me to be in India the following Monday morning for a meeting. My team is handling a fairly complex case which involves closing down a long term, multi-million pound agreement between two companies. As it turned out, myself and my client could not get visas at such short notice and had to handle the latest issues via conference calls.
I am due a family holiday myself. Like anyone with a career, I face challenges managing my work-life balance at this time of year. On the one hand, we have a big litigation team at DLA Piper with experienced people. On the other, I carry the ultimate responsibility for our performance and have a level of detailed knowledge which is significant in how we take cases forward.
The Blackberry is both a curse and a blessing. I like being able to track issues and the thinking time it buys me. But when I’m on holiday I have to discipline myself to be strict about when I review whatever emails arrive.
It doesn’t help that the last two family holidays have been interrupted by fairly big cases which required a lot of input from me.
At this point, my wife is less than impressed at my attempts to get away from it all. She calls my phone The Raspberry.
The best defence I have managed so far is pointing out that she is always texting her friends.
Ah, the curse of modern living…