It’s currently 12:04 PM here as I begin this post in an emptier-than-usual TIME office. Most everyone left over at their desks are keeping their eyes on the clock, awaiting the 2 PM mass exodus that usually comes with pre-Memorial Day Fridays.
And for good reason: This weekend, grills will ignite, beers will be cracked, and soon it’ll be Sunday morning, when lots of people will wake up experiencing that split second of dread thinking that there’ll be work tomorrow, followed by one of the best feelings in the world when you realize that you’ll be able to sleep in after all.
Market research firm Northstar Partners sent over some interesting data a few minutes ago, taking a look at the relationships between people and gadgets and the ways in which it’ll affect their vacation time this summer.
In a national survey of 1,000 people, 70% said that they planned on shutting down from work entirely, leaving behind their BlackBerrys, laptops and other what-have-you’s that’d let them access their e-mail.
Though only 64% plan on actually taking vacations this year (down from 74% last year), the data suggests that a good percentage of people are looking to untether themselves completely, especially since technology has effectively turned our 9 to 5’s into 24/7 jobs.
This is perhaps best reflected in the mentalities of the young workforce surveyed; less than half (49%) of the participants ages 18 to 34 suggested that they’d go without their work devices when on vacation, which reinforces all the signs pointing to our (at times) overly dependent relationship with technology.
So here’s my quick, ultra-cheesy (but realistic!) plea before everyone runs out for the weekend — and this is coming from a guy who’s always accused of having his iPhone out on the dinner table. If you’re in a position where you don’t ABSOLUTELY NEED to have a direct link to your work self, leave it all behind. Now is as good a weekend as ever to disconnect and take some time not having to fret over, I don’t know, that typo in paragraph three of your Mark Zuckerberg blog post from earlier (or a similar analogy for whatever your day job is).
My hope is that next year, when this type of data is collected again, the number of people leaving their work life behind will perhaps be a little bit higher.
More on TIME.com:
Do Gadgets Really Make Our Lives More Complicated?