I was at the Shedd Aquarium with my family over the weekend, and I realized that I've been occasionally doing something with my phone that some others might find useful. Or, maybe you do this already.

If you're anything like me, you have some sort of smart phone that gets your email, twitter feed, RSS reader, and a few other things that command your attention. I've even caught myself taking out my phone to take a picture of my kids, seen that I had an email, and then started to read the email!

How terrible is that? A few times lately I've just put my phone into Airplane mode.

I figure, when I get on an airplane I'm not worried that I'm out of touch for a few hours. So why not do the same thing if I want to hang out with my kids? I'm all for being connected, but if it starts disconnecting us from the people closest to us then that's not a very winning proposition.

I was just talking to another small business owner tonight and I think doing the same thing can help us with anything we know is important. If you need to be working on a design or recording a podcast, forget about just turning off email - why not unhook from the internet completely for three hours?

Next time you're feeling like you should be focused on something, maybe the best thing you can do is pretend you're getting on a plane and go into airplane mode.