OK, silly title, but it was all I was able to come up with on Christmas Eve morning. The point I was trying to capture is that I have recently come to the realization that the almost decade of PDA and Smartphone use which I have just lived through has probably actually hurt my productivity. I have recently devolved to a regular old cell phone and have magically freed up a ton of time in my day.

I am an IT professional and an entrepreneur. I run my own IT consulting business and have done so for several years. I have always considered myself to be the textbook user case for a Smartphone because I am a geek and I am self-employed. In fact, in the early days, we were pretty much the only people with Smartphones because we honestly were the only people who were able to justify the expense. These days, people of all ages and all walks of life have Smartphones and it's fairly obvious to me that can be attributed to the fact that these things have become entertainment devices rather than mere work tools. In doing so, they've become less conducive to productivity so I've dropped mine entirely. A Smartphone adds to productivity in the same way that a television does. In other words - not at all.

While I liked the fancy schmancy devices and UIs, I found that because I was constantly 'on' and the thing was always buzzing (I get about 200 emails a day never mind Facebook stuff, Tweets, and IM conversations), I was constantly distracted. Even when I put it on silent and threw it into my briefcase for a meeting, I would rush right back to it after the meeting to see what I had missed rather than reviewing the meeting notes and making action items. It became such a distraction that I would go through entire afternoons or evenings with people (socially or otherwise) and come away with almost no memory of what we talked about or what we did. I became, as the say, unavailable.

So, like a good IT pro, I sat down to purposely figure out if I could live without a Smartphone. After going through all the apps and functions on my phone, it turned out that the list of things I actually used was very small.

1. I needed to have availability to email 24/7.
2. I needed to have contacts with phone numbers and email addresses available 24/7.
3. I needed good battery life.
4. I wanted to Facebook and Twitter.
5. I wanted to be able to IM anyone.

That's it. I didn't need (or want) 95% of the apps on my device. I did not see that coming.

I then purchased a regular old LG 8100 flip phone. I bought an SMS messaging package for $10 a month, and a WAP data package for another $10 a month, and have never looked back.

I have been using IMAP email from Fastmail,fm for year. Fastmail is really, really, really serious about email and they have tons of features. One of the features they have which I had never made use of before is a full-blown IMAP WAP interface. I can retrieve email from any of the 30 or so IMAP folders in my account as well as compose and other general things like reply and forward.

Both Facebook and Twitter fully support two-way SMS. In fact, the whole reason Twitter only accepts 140 characters is because waaaay back in 2006 when Twitter came to life, it was solely an SMS gig. You updated your status and receive other's Tweets solely through SMS. Over the past year, Facebook has become consumed with Twitter envy so they have recently introduced SMS support as well. I can set my status, receive other's statuses and reply to comments all through SMS.

Anyone who has ever owned a regular cell phone and then switched to a Smartphone of any ilk has noticed that the Smartphone battery life is pretty abysmal. The Blackberry is the best of breed for battery life, but it still has trouble lasting 48 hours when used. Conversely, since a regular old cell phone is not constantly screaming out to the Internet for updates and emails, battery life is great. I can get almost four days out of my cell phone if I need to and since I have two batteries, that's a week. Can't argue with that.

Lastly, since every phone on the planet (I think) has the ability to send and receive SMS messages, that took the last item off the table. Rather than running GTalk, Windows Live and Skype just to be sure everyone I knew would be able to get hold of me, I just went to the great equalizer: SMS. Everyone can send and receive SMS messages regardless of their carrier, their handset or their apps.

So, strangely enough, by dropping one of the mostly highly marketed 'productivity' devices on the planet, I am actually more productive. I'm not saying that I will never need or want a Smartphone again, but I can say that my friends, family, and my clients all appreciate the fact that I am actually present and attentive when we're talking.

Oh, and I appreciate that my cell phone bill has dropped from $200 a month to $40 with zero needed or wanted loss of functionality.