Gist.

A wise man once said “I like being able to work at any moment. I don’t like having to work at every moment.”

Clever huh? It was Gist’s senior engineer, Tom May, during an email exchange about The New Workstyle and whether being ‘always on’ is a necessary evil.

The idea raised eyebrows and blood pressure when we first blogged about it last year, with commenters arguing the damaging effects of blurred boundaries between work and life and others embracing it as the reality of how we work today. Many of you told us you needed time to disconnect, to turn off email, to unplug and do something else; that you deliver better results if you have that sacred time off the clock. Equal numbers of you shared experiences of fluid workstyles where ‘always on’ is a comfortable state of mind.

More often than not, the conversation about employee connectedness, availability, reachability and ‘always on-ness’ is one about how workers incorporate devices into their daily routines. Most of us today are mobile workers through and through. We roll over in the morning and check email, twitter and facebook (or all of them together using Gist). We might leave work at a reasonable hour, but we’re back online after dinner attending to bits and pieces. Certainly, many of us read and respond to emails 7 days a week, either voluntarily or to keep up appearances.

While many discussions focus on whether or not this trend borders on an unhealthy obsession with work, what we’re all coming to terms with is the fact that workstyles have changed. A recent Pew Research study tells us some 87% of smartphone owners access the internet or email, including two-thirds (68%) who do so on a typical day, while Neverfail’s Osterman Research commissioned study (2010) shows 95% of workers are checking email outside of work hours. — Tweet this stat?

For better or worse, most of us are connected almost all the time, in one capacity or another — professionally or personally. Technology has blurred the line between work and life and as we continue down the path of social networks, enterprise consumerization, cloud computing and a powerful mobile workforce, that line will become more and more fuzzy. The question now is what are the rules of engagement?

Take, for example, Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital’s recent vacation responder, made noteworthy by Brad Feld and Gizmodo. In it, Josh exemplifies the reality of being connected as a modern, mobile worker, even when on vacation. Note, he isn’t on a working vacation and he isn’t promising to work, but he’s acknowledging that he isn’t not not working…

Let’s take a closer look at what is done here; Josh is having an upfront, formal communication with us about a topic that’s a little awkward and most times avoided, by:

• defining the circumstances of “after hours” availability
• setting and sharing his intention for responsiveness
• setting a communications boundary, including an exception to the rule
• setting expectations for others
• trusting the others to act accordingly

Josh’s formula can be applied to situation specific connectivity or to an individual’s general personal strategy for being connected and disconnected at work. The conversation about what’s expected of workers “after hours” is crucial to managing expectations and respecting each other’s workstyles.

At Gist, we’ve had lots of conversations about productivity, efficiency and how work really gets done. We’re big believers in Parkinson’s Law, which states that time is wasted to the amount of time which is available. (tweet this) A key problem we see is that the new ‘always on’ connectivity has turned into a ‘yes and’ extension of employees’ required in-office time. While most of us are already quietly unconvinced that more available/interactive/consuming-the-web time, makes us better contributors, those people who are willing and compelled to work in said style, can set the bar for everyone else. The perception of busyness has become synonymous with work output — and is the new normal. A herd mentality has been established and is keeping us in a perpetual state of alertness, responsiveness — but not necessarily productivity.

The challenge now is in reestablishing the rules of ‘always on’ to mean working smarter, not harder. If your best ideas happen late at night, you should be free to hammer them out, but there should be no expectations that you will and you shouldn’t anticipate others joining you online at midnight. For employees, this new arrangement requires a bit of responsibility to get the right things done at the right time. The challenge for employers is to stand back and let their employees succeed or fail on their own. The net result, we think, is a chance to work in our optimal style instead of a one-size-fits-all model of old corporate America, with the added insanity of a device centric, always on, always available workforce. Our advice? Have the conversation.