Human Condition: Communications stress: it's time to pull the plug

When Diane Keaton told her workaholic husband in Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam that he should give the office the number of the pay phone they were passing in case they needed him, it was a big joke. But farce in 1973 is reality today. Day or night on the mobile, via e-mail or phone lines, we are increasingly available. And if we're not, people think we should be - and are annoyed and frustrated when we're not.

More and more people are suffering from so-called "communication stress". And if you find yourself unable to turn your mobile off for fear of missing a call, or slamming down the phone when reaching another voice-mail, if you feel exhausted, uptight and constantly got at, you could be one of them.

Susan, 35, runs two administration companies from different offices and knows that she is suffering from classic communication stress but does not see a way out. "I am close to tears. My fuse has become very short and I find myself losing my temper over really silly things, especially technical problems. I am, by nature, very decisive but I have become a ditherer. I have been sleeping very heavily and waking up feeling drugged. I am on the phone all day not getting hold of the people I want and, meanwhile, the people who want to get to hold of me can't.

"I can hear other people taking messages for me and I try to mouth what I want them to do, but it never works. I have two phone lines at home and six lines in different offices, a mobile and e-mail - but I try not to tell people about that to keep the messages down. People really assume I'm on call 24 hours and I find it hard to switch off - since the last recession I am afraid to turn work down but it's so busy that I get totally stressed. I can't do my actual job for all the communication and pointless to-ing and fro-ing that is going on. I have learned to deal with the panic attacks, when I feel myself hyperventilating, but sometimes I wonder if it has all gone too far."

And out of the office it plagues us, too. We expect to be able to get hold of friends. We cluck with irritation if they haven't got an answer machine. John Mather, 30, a publisher, says his communications system has turned him into a monster. "I am used to instant results and, during the day, I get them. In the evening it's different. If I want to change an arrangement with friends last minute, I expect to be able to call them and it drives me wild if I can't get through. Yet, I hate having my own mobile phone on in a restaurant, for the embarrassment of it going off, but I have to just in case."

Mather's offending mobile is made worse by not having a conventional ring but a dodgy classical number in ear-splitting tones. "All it does is raise my expectations and then let me down. The battery lasts about half an hour and the reception is terrible. I want to get rid of it but I find it so hard. It's like chucking out the TV - a little voice in my head says, "Ah yes, but what if I missed something really useful?"'

A survey by the San Jose State University of 1,000 workers in the US revealed that they receive an average of 178 e-mail messages a day - many of which have no relevance at all. The survey found that the growth of communications meant people expect others to be available more for them, but at the same time they are desperate to be less available themselves. A recent survey for Reuters confirmed that the same kind of problems exist in Britain, with workers claiming to waste an hour a day responding to pointless e-mails. Also, half of the managers surveyed claimed to be overloaded.

Neil Crawford, psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic in London, was involved with the Reuters survey. He says, "The fact that there are all these communication options but you don't get to speak to the person just makes people crosser and more stressed. And the need to be constantly available stresses people out, too. They are swamped with so much unimportant information but terrified of missing the all-important call, so everything has to be switched on. It is a big pressure."

"You should be on call 48 hours a day, but never actually pick up the phone," says Lily Decker, 29, who has been working in Los Angeles in a film studio (getting hold of her took three calls each way, all interrupted by call waiting). You end up leaving eight different messages in eight different ways: the car answering phone, the work voice-mail, the answering service, the home answer phone, the e-mail, the mobile answering service and so on. Everyone gets really freaked out if you have less than five numbers, because it probably means you haven't got a life."

A recent mobile phone ad which declared, "now you will never be out of reach", unwittingly conveyed the underlying modern communications nightmare, which really reads, "you can run but you can't hide". With hundreds of e-mails, answer messages and voice-mails, people are rarely able to get any actual work done. Industrial Society spokesman Stefan Stern is particularly concerned about the growing pressure to be always available. The boss who expects your pager to be tied to your pyjama strings. "Everyone needs ground rules. People shouldn't feel they can get hold of you at any time, unless you are happy with it. It's easy to get bullied into being always available. You need time away."

Big technology is great at making people feel small. When you've contacted someone eight times and they haven't got back to you, it must be a deliberate slight. The temptation is to snub back, for the communication-stressed cannot tell when they are being insulted and when someone else is merely busy. "When they are able to send instantaneously, people can't understand why someone doesn't reply immediately," says Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology at UMIST in Manchester. "They forget that 30 other people may have done the same thing. Very many professional people are a 24-hour service now. I leave my home phone number on the work voice- mail for urgent calls. Hopefully, people won't call me after 10.30 at night."

"We have to prioritise and take control, set limits - I always answer urgent phone calls first, then urgent faxes and then urgent e-mails. We are becoming increasingly technically dependent but the technology is way ahead of people's ability to manage it time-wise. We cannot prioritise our e-mails. We get overloaded, stressed and start shouting at the family and if it isn`t dealt with we are more likely to burn out or fall ill."

Enlightened individuals are already taking action and literally unhooking themselves from technology. Peter Suedfeld, professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia specialises in solitude and believes in just saying no. His answer phone says cordially, "I am away, don't leave a message. Search for moments of wonder in your day." On his return, he explained, "People are inundated with technology and the pressure to be always available. But you are happier and function better if you can just leave it all behind sometimes. When we get overstressed it is easy to think that the world will collapse without you or that your world will collapse if you let go for a while. Being alone and away from technology for a holiday or even a weekend can be enormously therapeutic."

So, while communication is getting faster and superficially better there is a growing objection to it all,the automated voices giving you endless options none of which leads to a human voice, the increasing intrusion of other people's communication. Virgin is even thinking of having mobile phone-free carriages on its trains (although it took two wrong numbers, five passing on to other people and a series of inappropriate computer options to confirm this.)

While it rarely seems as though we are in charge of our communication, not the other way around, we should not be afraid to say when we don't want it. Remember, it's not a crime to be out. "I've stopped leaving such apologetic answer messages," says Stern. "When people say `I'm sorry I'm not in to take your call', the reality is that they're probably very happy to be somewhere else.

Comms. stress: Is it getting through to you?

Symptoms

1 Being put on hold has you frothing at the mouth

2 You have shouted at someone from directory enquiries in the past week

3 When away from work you check your voice-mail constantly

4 You contact people through every available means, always wanting to speak to them now, even if it isn't urgent

5 You're free time is dogged by communication arrangements

Action

1 Prioritise your messages, only respond to those that matter

2 Switch off the mobile phone when you know you are too busy to take a call

3 Have weekends off

4 Take control and slim everything down. Do you really need a pager and a mobile?

Is your e-mail newsgroup really useful to you or just electronic junk mail?

5 Take deep breaths