“不插电”有益工作

　　Kevin Meany, the CEO of Hilton Head, S.C.-based marketing and communications agency BFG, ditches his cellphone for part of the day. Baratunde Thurston, CEO of humor company Cultivated Wit, braved a 25-day Internet detox last year and now settles for what he calls 'micro-disconnecting'for example, not checking Twitter at a meeting. And Spencer Rascoff, the CEO of online real estate hub Zillow, turns off his company email for a 24-hour stretch every week.

　　'It doesn't sound like much,' Mr. Rascoff says. But he gets about 500 emails a day.

　　Internet sabbaticals have been in vogue recently, but those at the helm of companies aren't usually able to completely cut the cord. Still, many CEOs say they want to find a balance, suspecting it might actually help their work.

　　'I am constantly thinking about Zillow, even when I'm sleeping,' Mr. Rascoff says. '[Without technology], I can think about it more thoughtfully without interruptions.'

　　Leslie Perlow, a Harvard Business School professor and the author of 'Sleeping with your Smartphone,' says time away from technology can make people more creative, innovative and productive.

　　'Everybody is bombarded all the time these days,' she says. 'The more senior you are, the more you perceive, 'there's nobody but me.''

　　Jim Moffatt, CEO of Deloitte Consulting LLP, finds that occasionally tuning out helps him cut through the 'fog' and 'clutter' of the day-to-day grind, making it easier to solve big problems. While 'recharging' on a recent summer vacation he caught a movie with his 14 year-old son. As the credits rolled, he had an epiphany about who the elusive, missing employee should be for a team he was putting together. During fireworks this past Fourth of July, he mapped out global strategy in his head.

　　'You tend to think bigger. You tend to think broader,' Mr. Moffatt says of the time he spends off the grid. Typically, he'll take about 10 days in a row off each summer; this year, because of family schedules, he divided it up into smaller chunks.

　　By stepping away from their smartphones, executives are showing their employees that unplugging is 'legitimate,' Ms. Perlow says.

　　Recent research from the University of Glasgow and UK-based Modeuro Consulting showed that executive email habits can be contagious; when the leadership team at a London-based power company decreased their email output, employees followed suit.

　　Mr. Moffatt says one of the reasons he's so public about his unplugging is to show his employees that it is important to have a life outside of work. Plus, his occasional absences give colleagues the chance to exercise more power.

　　'It sends a pretty strong signal to your team: I don't have to be there all the time,' he says.

　　Handing over the reins does occasionally come with growing pains. Mr. Thurston of Cultivated Wit eschewed everything from work email to Facebook to Instagram last December and found it to be a 'humbling' experience.

　　'Can the world get along without me?' he wondered.

　　The answer was yes.