Friday, November 28, 2014
I have always appreciated that traveling is a time to get
out of habitual ways of thinking and acting and to look at life with an
elevated perspective. One habit I
can’t maintain while traveling is that of checking and responding to all emails
(almost) every day and of obsessively checking my email several times per
day.
After a three-week trip, I look at my email
inbox. It feels like looking at old lover with
whom I keep reengaging even though I’ve tasted the sweetness of liberation from
our recurring pattern of drama and dysfunction. I sit here craving her. Wanting her. Remembering full well why I stepped away and
remembering just as poignantly why I made a habit in the first
place. A bad habit. An addiction. It hurts inside to recognize that a habit is a
bad one and to choose it again and again.
Having been away three weeks, the visual cues in my office trigger my
email checking compulsions and yet I’ve also got enough distance to feel how
good it is not to indulge, how nice it is to have choice, to be free. David Allen convinced me of the value
of daily Inbox Zero, which I’ve been (mostly) limiting to one 25-minute chunk
per day (a “Pomodoro”). Timothy Ferris, author of the 4 Hour Work Week argues alternatively for ½ hour of email per week. Email, he argues, keeps us reactive instead of proactive,
responding to relatively unimportant things that take lots of time without
getting results. I find this to be true in my work. Ferris recommends batching like tasks, eliminating distractions and interruptions and automating processes in order to liberate yourself to live the life and do the work of which you dream.
Sitting at this threshold, I see possibility and also resistance,
fear. The ego
holds onto an old wound even when freedom is in sight. Why is my ego structure is wrapped up with
email addiction? It gives me a sense of being important,
of mattering, being necessary, indispensable. It gives me cause to increase my heart rate, get a burst of
adrenaline, increase focus, a sense that I’m responding to something urgent,
staying on top of it, handling it.
Previously, as Executive Director of
the Stone Soup Café, overseeing a weekly meal, there were time-sensitive responses for
which people were waiting. If I
didn’t respond, I’d slow down one cog that would ripple to other cogs in the
system. But, in order to be more
aligned with my personal purpose and increase my positive impact on the world,
I’ve made changes in my work life.
People aren’t relying on me to fill volunteer slots each Saturday, but I
have committed to publishing a book.
I’m not getting random inquiries from volunteers, but I’ve committed to
multiple types of regular monthly correspondence with a set number of emerging Café
leaders. I’m not attending various meetings every week, but I am cultivating long-term relationships with
high-leverage national partners.
Instead of time-sensitive quick responses, my current commitments
require focused concentration, from an elevated perspective, over a prolonged
period of time. Especially because
much of this work will be done sitting in front of a computer, habitually checking email threatens to distract me from moving forward on these commitments.
