Given the widespread adoption of smart phones, text messaging, video calling and social media, today’s professionals mean it when they brag about staying connected to work 24/7.

Technology allowed Karen Riley-Grant, a manager at Levi Strauss in San Francisco, to take care of some business with her New York publicist while she was in labour in the hospital last November.

“I had time on my hands,” she says, and “full strength on my phone — five bars.”

It once enabled Craig Wilson, an executive at Avaya in Toronto, to take his children to a Linkin Park concert and be able to duck out to finish a task for a client in Australia, he says, “without disruption to my family commitment or my work commitment.”

And it recently gave Perry Blacher, chief executive of the social investing firm Covestor, a way to participate in a board telecon while attending a christening celebration at a pub in England.

But all of this amped-up productivity comes with a growing sense of unease. Too often, people find themselves with little time to concentrate and reflect on their work. Or to be truly present with their friends and family.

There’s a palpable sense “that home has invaded work and work has invaded home and the boundary is likely never to be restored,” says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. “The new gadgetry,” he adds, “has really put this issue into much clearer focus.”

The phenomenon started with the rise of BlackBerrys and has snowballed with the use of more smart phones, social media and tablet computers. Employees are using their smart phones and other devices to connect with corporate email, applications and data wherever they happen to be — whether at home, on the go or even on vacation.

Now add the effects of the recent recession. Because jobs and promotion opportunities are scarce, many workers are worried someone who is more connected and available could outclimb them on the corporate ladder, says Peggy Klaus, an executive coach in Berkeley, Calif. “There is the feeling that advancement requires being plugged in at all times.”

But at what price?

Riley-Grant, who is 35 and director of global consumer marketing for the Dockers brand, has felt the stress of trying to stay constantly connected — not because of pressure from her bosses, she says, but her own fear.

“I love my job,” she says. “The decision to plug in or unplug is a personal one. My job is fast-paced and demanding. If I’m not paying attention during the off-hours, things could go south.”

But even before the birth of her second child last year, she recognised that she needed to power down to achieve the right work-life balance. So with the help of Klaus, she made a plan to take small steps: She let her co-workers know that she would be turning off her iPhone for a few hours on weeknights and weekend days, and completely on certain Friday nights.

“I worry about the speed at which they are going,” she says, adding that she wants them to “shut down” when needed, for the sake of their families and their health.

The conversation about what’s expected of workers “after hours” is crucial to managing expectations, researchers say. Wilson, 52, global director of strategic consulting for Avaya, a provider of business communications systems, says he is respectful of his colleagues who work in different countries and time zones. “If I email someone at 7 at night,” he said, “it’s not legitimate of me to expect a response that night or at 7 in the morning.”

To a large degree, how workers incorporate devices into their daily routines depends on the individual. Some people insist on keeping work and life concerns separate, while others integrate components of both and manage them together.

For example, Stephanie Marchesi of the marketing firm Fleishman-Hillard in New York developed a system that involves carrying four devices at all times: an iPhone and an iPad for family and social life and a BlackBerry and a laptop for work.

Marchesi, 47, says technology “allows me the flexibility I need to balance work life with personal life.” She maintains separate email addresses and calendars because her company can access her work email and calendar.

I want my personal life personal,” she says. “I have chosen to keep things separate. I don’t need my work to know when my son has a play date or dentist appointment.”

Alan Atwell doesn’t keep his work and personal life on separate devices, but he does try to ensure his work life doesn’t hold his personal life hostage. Atwell, 44, national leader for tax process and tchnology at RSM McGladrey, an accounting and business consulting firm in Charlotte, North Carolina, tries to be accessible when he is away from work. But only to a point.

“If something important comes up, if I need to step out, I can,” he says. “At the same time, I can wait if I am with my family or taking care of civic obligations. Generally, I try not to walk around staring at the phone. I do try to pick moments when I need to be present for whatever group I am interacting with.”

John Lilly, the former chief executive of Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser, recently pondered publicly what it meant to be so connected and decided to initiate a temporary reprieve.

Lilly is by choice and necessity a power user of multiple gadgets and social media. As he prepared for his new role as a venture partner at Greylock Partners, the Silicon Valley investment firm, he announced on his blog that he was taking time “to be a little more generative, to think bigger, more original thoughts.” He said he would turn off Google Reader, Twitter and Facebook.

“I’m really excited to have a bit of time to start 2011 to slow down, try to think longer term, and to slow down my clock,” he wrote.

Lilly, 40, says he tried. But as it turns out, too much of his life was tangled up in email and networks. “I couldn’t figure out how to disengage from all that stuff,” he says.

Still, in anticipation of his new job, he has slowed his pace, which had been in overdrive at Mozilla. “As an investor, the entrepreneur is the thing,” he said. “I want to get to a place to focus on them, to be present and listen and hear what they are about.”

Too much connectivity can damage the quality of one’s work, says Robert Sutton, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss and a professor at Stanford. Because of devices, he says, “nobody seems to actually pay full attention; everybody is doing a worse job because they are doing more things.” Mobile devices and social mdia, he says, “make us a little more oblivious, a little more incompetent.” Just recall those pilots who overshot their destination two years ago because they were using computers, he adds. “The emotionally compelling nature of the device and live information it carries — and the intermittent reinforcement it carries, plus the pressure of living in a world where for many people ‘immediately’ now really means immediately — causes people to be entranced by their devices and to ignore real life as it unfolds in front of them,” Sutton says.

Sometimes avoiding real life might be part of the appeal. When Riley-Grant was in labour and tapping away on her phone, she was “in denial that my life and everything I knew to be real and true was about to change,” she says. On leave, she has switched from using her smart phone for work to keeping up with friends and family. At the same time, she is bracing herself for technological re-entry and all its demands. “We’re in a technology tsunami,” says her coach, Klaus. “Whether you love it or hate it.”