Confession: I’m a Psychopath
When it comes to checking my emails…
I have a particular sort of madness, an unhealthy obsession.
Most people I talk with tell me it’s social media that consumes their time.
Not me. For me, it is reading and responding to emails. Busy work that helps me feel like I’m getting stuff done when, really, I’m just wasting precious hours.
I remember a time when I thought it was so cool that technology made it possible for us to communicate via email on our phones while on the go.
I thought it was the most amazing thing that I could tend to work whenever and wherever I was at any moment of any day.
It took me longer than I care to admit how absolutely destructive constant access to email is for me.
There have been so many moments over the years when I’ve been out enjoying a fun day with my friends or family and I click into my email to find a note that immediately zaps me out of the present moment and into stress mode.
Email: I need to reschedule our meeting to Tuesday.
My Immediate Thought: Shit… I’m going to have to rearrange my entire week to make that work.
My Action: Immediately click into my Calendar app to see how this can work and start a mental list of all the people or things that will need to move to make this happen. Start emailing other clients to see if they can move their time with me. Push other items to the following week to clear some space.
That’s just one of a thousand examples of how reading a single email could throw me completely off for who knows how long before I can get back to the fun I’m supposed to be having in the present moment.
I’ve talked about this on my blog before, how the constant ding ding ding of email alerts can stifle your productivity and interrupt your workflow, and in this example, my funflow.
Avoiding Context Switching is definitely helpful. So is using your email’s Snooze Feature.
But I’ve realized that I need even more boundaries when it comes to email.
I tried turning off email alerts on my phone.
That was great, but it didn’t stop me from obsessively clicking that handy little Gmail icon on my home screen. Even while lying in bed at night when I’m supposed to be shutting off my brain and not taking in new information.
I tried moving the email icon to page 8 of my phone’s home screen.
I thought that by having to swipe left a zillion times, it would give me the chance to stop and ask myself if I really wanted to open it. Nope, didn’t work.
It’s still just too tempting because it’s there.
What I had to do was remove the temptation.
So, one beautiful Saturday morning, I uninstalled email from my phone completely.
Now if I want to check it, I have to be at the computer, which is only open during my self-scheduled work hours.
Then, I designated two 15-minute blocks for each day Monday through Friday that I will allow myself to check and respond to emails.
That’s 150 minutes per week… 2.5 hours. That’s it.
After I did these two things, I spent the rest of the weekend fully immersed and present with my family.
We watched the first two Lord of the Rings movies.
I finished reading my college roommate Georgina Cross’s fantastic suspense novel, Nanny Needed.
I cooked a pot of chili. I did yoga. I watered my plants.
I went to my cousin’s birthday party and sat happily at a table with my aunts, immersed in laughter at the childhood stories they told.
Through all of these self-care activities, I didn’t feel the need to look at my phone. Not even once.
It feels so uplifting to be free of this burden!
This morning, Monday, I opened up my email–on my computer–to see a total of 72 emails waiting for me. 41 of those are new since I last checked it on Friday.
That’s 41 instances that could have pulled me away from a truly enjoyable weekend.
And you know what? Not a single one of them was more important than the time I allowed myself to be fully present with my family and myself.
Not a single one.
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What psychopathic trait or obsessive madness do you have when it comes to work?! Hit me up in my email and tell me. Just know that it may be a minute before I respond. ;)
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