Following the extremely wise advice of this person, I’ve turned off all automated email reminders, chat clients, Twitterrific, Skype, and calendar popups. They are not that much of a distraction, but they impose a real mental tax that I am glad to be free of.
I have had some of this puzzle put together for a while now: I remember years ago turning off email notifications at work (because I was okay not knowing that second if someone had emailed me), but in the time since, I have (on slow days) become an eight-hours-a-day email-checking machine, deluding myself into thinking that, because I didn’t have new mail, I didn’t have anything better to do. The machine no longer interrupted me, so I took responsibility for interrupting myself. Better in ways, but much, much worse in others.
I’m going to try to clear out email once a day, as a semi-scheduled activity. It’s going great so far. I am a little shocked to think “24 hours of not paying attention to email, and I only have 3 messages waiting?” - a sure sign that I was devoting too much time and attention to being on top of things that weren’t important, or maybe not even real.
