The scene plays out dozens of times a day.
As a solopreneur, I am – what’s a better sounding word than – addicted?… to my email. At any given moment a message from someone new, or even better from a repeat client, could be showing up heralding new jobs and exciting projects. And like it or not, some of them are very time-sensitive. This makes ignoring or disconnecting from digital communication feel like career suicide. (It’s not – but hey we’re all human and prone to a little dramatics here and there).
There are also a decent number of other emails that come in throughout the day, ranging in importance from healthcare and stuff from the kids’ school, to shipping notifications and 13 emails from StubHub cause I looked at Dave Matthews Band tickets for seven seconds 2 weeks ago.
But what’s been bugging me, and unbeknownst to me actually having a decent effect on my productivity, is spam. Not like, the real spams – not the scams and junk your email filter probably (hopefully) catches. But the stuff where someone did semi-legitimately get your email at one point and now sends you marketing stuff that you ignore on a regular basis.
I’m looking at you, HelloFresh.
The fact is that in the moment, it takes less time to just press delete real quick and the problem goes away … until tomorrow. I realized lately that after a long time of making that choice, I now had set myself up for a whole series of mini-interruptions each day that, when all added up, was actually making a decent dent in my productivity. As I set off on a journey to improve focus, alleviate time scarcity and maximize my time, both profession and personal, I realized this was something I needed to address.
We live in a world of distractions to be sure. So it can be hard enough already to get into a flow state where we’re really on a roll accomplishing whatever it is we need or want to be doing. But getting poked by Red Robin because it’s “$10 Burger Tuesday” is something we’re in control of and can eliminate as one more thing that pulls our focus when we’re trying to work*
*or play, or connect, or pay attention to our kids, etc
I started taking the extra 15 seconds each time one of those emails comes in to click through and Unsubscribe and my inbox is already more peaceful. I am slightly less distracted and it also helps take me off the dopamine rollercoaster of “ooh an email! oh, it’s junk…”
If you’ve read Atomic Habits by James Clear (do it!) or are a British Cycling fan, you’ll know about Dave Brailsford and “The Aggregation of Marginal Gains.” Simply put, the idea that a large change in results can be brought about by compounding a bunch of very small changes in processes. This small and powerful idea took the British National Cycling team from a perennial disappointment to a juggernaut of a dynasty in very little time. Clear covers this in the first chapter of Atomic Habits and also lays out most of that first chapter (almost word for word!) in this presentation 1% Better Every Day – James Clear at ConvertKit Craft + Commerce 2017
James also says “You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.” This was very powerful to me. We often think of distractions as happening to us. How often have you said “the day got away from me?” It happens! But it happens more if we set ourselves up in an environment prone to distractions.
There are many people and companies vying for our attention every day. Some of them deserve it and some of them don’t. And in many cases, we get to choose who has access to us. So I’m choosing to whittle that down a bit and cut out some avoidable distractions. Gotta keep this train on the track!
- A side note, I love how this goal of eliminating distractions dovetails with the idea of “If something takes 5 minutes or less to do, do it now.” These two thoughts actually are somewhat at odds with each other but I’m working on a system that marries them, and will report back on that in another blog post!
So now I get less emails. I’ve set up my environment to pull my focus a little bit less each day, helping me finish whatever tasks I’m actually prioritizing in less time and with greater quality.
On the other hand, now I won’t get reminded when it’s “Cheap Chicken Monday” at Safeway… hmm…