I’m pretty sure I have written about this topic before. In fact, it’s a minor obsession for me: How to make work less stressful and be hijacked less often by distractions.
A few weeks ago, I went on a family vacation. Before I go on vacations, I try to make sure that I don’t get sucked into work while I’m away. One strategy I use involves deleting my work email profiles from my phone. Why were they there in the first place, though? I often tell people that having email on your phone, and even worse, having notifications of emails as they arrive, is the path to hell. How on earth can anybody get anything done if they are constantly distracted by notifications and email messages? And what are emails other than a bunch of people who want you to do stuff? Well, I had slipped into not practicing what I had been preaching. I didn’t go so far as to allow notifications of emails, but I did have email on my phone. I mainly did this because I liked the send-later feature, which seems to work better on phones than on computers.
But after being on vacation, I reaffirmed my commitment to avoid checking work email on my phone. The profiles remain deleted. I have set things up so that the only easy way to check my work email is to look at it on my computer. As a result, I feel a lot less scattered, distracted, and stressed than I did before.
Another strategy that I have been revisiting is to make sure that I get most or all of my items on my to-do list done before I allow myself to check and respond to email each day. Previously, I had slipped back into a pattern of starting with email, falling down the rabbit hole of responses and tasks related to emails, and living in the illusion that I was actually getting stuff done. Then I’d gaze sadly at all of the reminders on my to-do list that were falling by the wayside. Now, staying away from email until I’m done most of my tasks, I can focus on getting stuff done efficiently without messages and requests rattling around in my brain. Then, when I do check my email, I can do so in a focused and efficient manner.
I guess another way to think about this is that I’m recommitting to being mindful and effective with work. That’s not to say I won’t fall off the wagon again in the future. I have noticed that, while I’m getting high-priority tasks done, I still have to manage the urge to check my email. Isn’t it strange that electronics work like this? You can actually have cravings and urges to engage with your electronic devices, check emails and texts, go on social media (which I am happy to say that I don’t do), etc. To deal with these urges, I find it helpful to sit back and surf them for a bit: just watching them as they rise and fall, reminding myself that I can check email later, and returning to participating in what I was doing.
In any event, I hope some of these tips might be helpful if you have a similar goal to be more mindful, effective, and efficient in an important area of your life.
~Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.