I have developed an annoying habit ("Another one?!" I hear you chorus).

At least those left in my office when I travel around the country find it annoying... I’m wondering if it’s Freudian.

What happens is that I keep leaving my mobile phone behind. I take my laptop but for some reason in the last couple of months the phone just doesn't travel with me.

I’m not a Luddite. I love new technology, so why do I keep getting to the station, patting my pocket and finding that the phone has been left on the shelf?

Could it be a reaction to instant availability? Am I rebelling against a society that allows you no time away from the workplace? Or is it a first sign of impending senility?

I’m old enough to remember (see, I do still have some memory) when telephones were, if not a luxury, then a rarity. In my working lifetime as a sports reporter, going to Europe and managing to get a phone line so thast you could dictate your report was a lottery.

I remember sitting for an hour-and-a-half beside a silent phone at the Estádio das Antas in Porto. I finally got to file my report from the hotel at midnight.

It was worse if you went somewhere really foreign. One famous story concerns veteran sports reporter Peter Corrigan who was somewhere in South America. He finally got a line through to his office and said: "Peter Corrigan."

A sub-editor, no doubt up against a deadline, snapped back: "Not here. He’s in South America", and slammed down the phone. It was hours before Corrigan managed to get through again, with countless editions and deadlines missed.

But now phones work. I got rung up at 2am during the Seoul Olympics by my deputy sports editor who wanted to know how tall the sprinter, Calvin Smith, was. But at least in 1988 I could go out for a meal or a drink and the office would not have been able to get hold of me.

Because then, there were no mobiles.

Not any more. I rang my cover designer the other day on her mobile. She was sitting on a beach in the Canaries. What made it worse was that because of the peculiar way mobile phone charging works, she paid for the call.

So maybe it’s not so strange that one mobile phone company, Orange, is suggesting we should switch off now and again. It’s not going so far as to say that we should leave our phones behind, but it does say that to enjoy a healthy work/life balance we should turn off during weekends and evenings.

Orange’s advice comes from the Orange Future Enterprise Coalition (OFEC), a group of industrialists, academics and futurologists brought together by the company.

While finding out about the report - Organisational Lives which was written by the Henley Management Centre - I came across a fascinating story which reckoned that the constant distractions of e-mail and texting are more harmful to performance than cannabis.

Apparently, if you are the sort of person who is constantly disturbed by the ping of incoming e-mail, or by phone calls or text messages, you can suffer a ten-point fall in your IQ. At least that’s what researchers at the University of London Institute of Psychiatry have found.

And that’s worse than smoking canabis. Fortunately it’s only temporary, but all that shifting of concentration makes the brain tired and not so focused.

The researchers tested some 1,100 volunteers and half of them said they replied to e-mails instantly or as soon as possible, and 1 in 5 admitted to breaking off meals or social engagements to deal with e-mail.

The study didn’t say if there was a control group giggling away and eating as much as they possibly could in an adjoining room.Turn off, tune out,

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