Do You Really Need Your Cell Phone?

A couple of weeks ago, my beautiful wife Michele and I flew to New York to attend a marketing event and enjoy a week-long visit with my Mom.

When we arrived at the airport and were just about to get out of the cab, I realized that I didn’t have my cell phone with me.

Panic ensued, as Michele and I searched through both of my bags and the pockets of my hoodie over and over.

But we didn’t find my cell phone.

Now I had a decision to make: Make the trip anyway, or head back home to retrieve my phone and then return to the airport (fortunately, we had left early enough, so it would be possible to pull off the ol’ to-the-airport/back-home/back-to-the-airport maneuver in time to still make our flight).

While I went through the decision-making process out loud, our cab driver proclaimed his disbelief that I would even consider traveling without my cell phone, telling me “You can’t go anywhere without your phone. Our phone is a part of us.”

(*A skeptic would say that he was simply motivated by the possibility of the triple fare and tip, but I’m convinced that he really believed what he was saying.)

That statement almost made me decide to travel without my phone – just to prove the cabbie wrong.

But instead, I chose to head back home and retrieve it, just in case I could figure out a use for it while on my week-long trip.

Regardless of that decision, in the grand scheme of things I feel that our cell phones are most certainly NOT a part of us.

PUH-LEEZE!!!!

• Doesn’t anyone remember just seven years ago, when no one carried around a phone, camera, video camera, video editor, radio, calculator, voice recorder, atlas, compass, alarm clock, calendar, computer, library, newsstand, typewriter, GPS, notebook, video game center and who-knows-what-else in their pocket at all times?

• …when couples actually dined in fancy restaurants while gazing into each other’s eyes, instead of staring at their Facebook accounts and carrying on multiple text message conversations all night?

• …when you could go to a movie or seminar without having to listen to snippets of obnoxious pop songs suddenly erupting from people’s pants at random times?

The average American can’t imagine life without his or her cell phone glued to his or her hip 24/7. But is a cell phone really a “necessity?”

Let’s see…

• Less than 15% of people in the world own smartphones (and only about 25% of Americans).

• Some of the world’s most successful people refuse to use even the most basic cell phones, including Warren Buffett, Elton John and the owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and former richest person in Russia, Mikhail Prokhorov.

• North Korea’s government recently concluded that cell phones are “threatening the safety of the country,” prompting them to put severe restrictions on their use.

In other words, it’s quite possible to be a human being and not NEED to have a cell phone with you at all times.

As actor Vince Vaughn says, “I don’t own a cell phone because…the old way always worked for me. You call me, I call you back, like a gentleman.” He has publicly proclaimed his distaste for the very idea that people could get in touch with him whenever they wanted to if he carried a cell phone.

I agree with him 100%.

As a successful business leader known as “The King Of Implementation,” there is no doubt that I would get MUCH less accomplished if I were to allow myself to get addicted to my cell phone – or even to turn it on more than once in a while.

My clients count on me to produce prodigious amounts of progress towards profitable projects – NOT to be able to type 140 characters a minute with just my thumbs in instant response to incessant interruptions.

Oh, and by the way…

Ironically, I just happened to have had my cellphone on me during that entire airport cab ride. I had absent-mindedly slipped it into one of the many pockets of a new pair of shorts that I had never before worn outside of the house – something I discovered only after I directed the driver to take us back home so we could search our home from top to bottom in vain while the cab waited outside and our flight inched perilously closer and closer to its imminent departure time.

So, what do YOU think?

Are our cell phones “a part of us?” Do you believe you can’t go anywhere without your cell phone? Or do you purposely make yourself less easily accessible, so you can get more accomplished with less interruptions?

Please post your response in a comment below.

photo credit: @ifatma. via photopin cc