I am Iceland for this week and on the way over I decided to turn off the cellular data on my iPhone 5. I am on AT&T so cellular coverage should be good. What feels better though is not being a slave to my phone and having to check e-mail, text messages or phone calls.

One of the best things not being in a corporate e-mail environment is the amount of e-mail I get is magnitude less or more. Direct e-mail to my greenm3.com e-mail address is about a dozen a day. My business partners on another project where we have our own domain and e-mail we can see a month's worth of e-mail on one screen of gmail. Aside from my family my phone rings 2-3 a week. And, text messages again aside from family in general can go days or weeks with no messages until I head to a conference.

Ironically as little as I get e-mail, text, and phone calls it is still burden to get disturbed by random things. So, just turning off the cellular data seemed worth a try.

Mobile is driving an always connected society. To do quality work requires time to think and no distractions.

When I go back home I'll pick one day a week to just turn off the cell phone data when working from home. The phone won't ring, text messages will be much less. My family can still reach me with iMessage or just not on my office door.

I knew I would learn some interesting things on this trip to Iceland, but I didn't expect that unplugging from the cellular network would be one of them.

Give it a try. Turn off your cellular network.

BTW, the cool thing is the iPhone 5 battery lasts a long long time with cellular turned off.