What started as a project to boost work-life balance at the Boston office of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) by Leslie Perlow, a professor at Harvard Business School, turned into a way to redefine teamwork by reducing 24/7 BlackBerry access. Perlow concluded that most consultants created self-induced pressure to stay in touch with colleagues via BlackBerry. Clients weren’t demanding full-time access, and most non-work hour conversations were among teammates. Most consultants balked about relinquishing the use of their BlackBerry, even for one night.

In her book Sleeping with Your Smartphone, Perlow called this behavior “the cycle of responsiveness.” She started working with three teams at BCG in 2008 (which eventually turned into a study of 1,000 teams) to determine how they could change how they work together and reduce the 24/7 communication. To break this cycle, Perlow introduced small changes she called “predictable time off.” When one consultant took a BlackBerry break Wednesday night after 6 p.m. until the next morning, a colleague would cover in case of an emergency, freeing the consultant from worry. Moreover, the team met weekly to discuss how the plan was working.

Of course, BCG consultants were still reachable by BlackBerry 24/7 the other six days a week, so this experiment didn’t radically diminish their on-call responsibilities. Perlow said, “It doesn’t make a tough job easier; it just makes it better.”

“Our staff didn’t mind working hard, but what they missed was the lack of predictability in their life,” explained Deborah Lovich, head of consulting and business services at BCG’s Boston office. Now they could make a dinner reservation and know they wouldn’t miss it because of work. In the past, BCG consultants didn’t work 24/7, but they were on call 24/7.

When the firm’s staff was forced to turn off their gadgets for one day, it encouraged them to prioritize their tasks, rethink how they were spending their time, and even work better as a team, Perlow says. The project has been so successful that 69% of all consultants in BCG North America now turn their BlackBerrys off one day a week.

Perlow surveyed two types of consultant groups: those who took a day off from Blackberry use and a control group of employees who didn’t and compared their attitudes on staying at the firm and work life balance. Fifty-eight percent of the BCG employees who separated from their BlackBerrys said they were likely to stay at the firm. By comparison, just 40% of those who had continued with their normal smartphone use said the same thing. And 54% of the BlackBerry blackout group reported a solid work life balance, compared to 38% in the control group.

When Perlow surveyed clients about BCG’s consultants taking a night off from availability, most hadn’t noticed any change, underscoring the theory that most consultants either impose the 24/7 approach on themselves or are responding to peer pressure.

Taking that one night off and keeping communication lines with your coworkers open “creates more openness and ability to discuss issues about work and personal life. It creates more passion,” Perlow said.

For more go to http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/21/smartphones-work-life-balance/?iid=SF_T_River