When I was at university I spent a summertravelling around Europe with some friends, and one of them suggested we dropin on his parents’place in the south of France.

There are two things I remember about thatvisit.

There was the mortification of beinggreeted by a butler who ceremoniously carried my tatty luggage —a fewthings stuffed into a plastic bag —to the suite ofrooms to which I’d been allocated.

But what stays in my mind even more was theimage of his father —who turned out to be a famous tycoon —clad in smallswimming trunks with cigar clamped between teeth, holding a gin and tonic in onehand and a telephone receiver in the other.

The year was 1979 and this was what powerlooked like.

The man was too important to be out oftouch with the deals he was doing.

So he had installed a telephone line by theswimming pool and passed his summers issuing instructions from a lounger by thewater.

A quarter of a century later, technologyallowed all of us to pretend to be tycoons.

We might not have had the butler or thepool house but everyone could head to the beach with a BlackBerry packed alongwith their towels.

And because we could, we did.

Only for most of us, what we were doing wasnot deals, it was responding to mundane inquiries that could have waited twoweeks —or forever.

This year, I decided to do somethingradical that I hadn’t done for almost a decade.

I took a proper holiday.

I disconnected myself from work altogether.

I didn’t open any workmessages.

I spent time reading, walking, looking atthe sea —and sometimes getting into it —while I thoughtabout not much at all.

When I returned to work and reacquaintedmyself with email, it was perfectly straightforward.

I deleted almost all of them unread,responding only to the things that looked interesting.

Far from feeling overwhelmed, I felt acertain excitement in the sudden immersion in work.

It was a new-shoes and sharp-pencil sort offeeling that used to go with the beginning of a school term.

Over the past week it has started to dawnon me that my radical action was not radical at all.

I was merely following the latest fashion.

Last week I sent an email to anentrepreneur I know, and within seconds the automatic reply came back: I am onholiday until August 30 and will not be checking messages.

This was particularly remarkable given thatlast time I’d seen him —some five years ago —he had told me how he expected all his employees to respond tomessages instantly wherever they were and whatever they were doing.

So I emailed back asking what had made himchange his mind —but all I got in return was the same automatic message telling mehe wasn’t reading whatever I was sending.

The very next day I got an email from awoman who I had contacted before I went away.

It began: Sorry for my radio silence —I have hada blissful two-week holiday and am just catching up on emails on my return.

Here was the same thing again: a driven,thirtysomething entrepreneur who wanted me to know not how hard she worked onholiday but how she loafed around, and how much she enjoyed it.

To see how widespread this change is, I’ve done alittle experiment.

I’ve collected all theout-of-office emails I’ve had this summer, and counted the number that were followed atonce by an email sent from the beach.

Three years ago, it was very unusual for anautomatic message not to be quickly followed by a real one.

This year I’ve had a total of 38automatic messages telling me the sender was away, only six of which have beensucceeded by a personal, poolside reply.

Bragging about not working on holiday seemsto be part of a wider trend —which I wrote about a few months ago —in whichfashionable execs flaunt not their long hours, but their short ones.

To be emailing from the pool does not proveyou are powerful, it is starting to be seen for what it is —a sign ofweakness, poor time management and an inability to delegate.

If you can take two weeks off altogether itshows you have overcome all gadget addiction, and like a modern-day tycoon cancontrol when you work —and when you don’t.