“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” – Herbert Simon
My WTF Realization
A few days ago I had the feeling that I was spending a lot of time online but wasn’t accomplishing any significant. I’m sure many of you get this feeling once in awhile – I decided to log my time and find out exactly where it was going. I use an app on my iPhone called Chronology to do this, which lets you set up a bunch of timers that you can start or stop.
If you wanted to do this, the easiest way is get a sheet of paper, set a timer for every 15 minutes, and when the timer goes off just write down what you’re currently working on.
What I found made me kick myself. Turns out I spent 4 hours and 12 minutes working on low-impact tasks like checking e-mail, talking on Facebook, and posting in forums on that specific day. I’m not much for swearing, but when I saw that, I literally said, “What the f***!”” out loud. I was shocked the number was that high. The idea of a 30-day trial immediately popped into my mind.
The Problem
I have two areas in life that I believe you should live in – high-impact productivity, and unplugged downtime. The big issue with spending four hours in a day on e-mail and other related activities is that it doesn’t really fall in either of those categories. It’s kind of in a hinterlands area, an area that burns energy but doesn’t accomplish anything significant or motivate you.
The worse part is the addiction and conditioning. It’s all based on variable rate reinforcement. When you pop open your e-mail browser, you have no idea what you’re going to get. You could get nothing, you could get a few pieces of spam, or you could get some fantastic news.
E-mail is almost like Christmas morning as far as reinforcement goes. What happens as you start to get this variable rate reinforcement feedback is that you’ll feel compelled to check your e-mail more often, because you never know when something is going to hit. Over time… you become an addict!
I was checking e-mail up to 15 times a day up until two days ago when I started this trial. The scary thing is, that’s on the low end for people who have Blackberries with e-mail notification on them. A friend of mine says he checks his over 100 times a day… we’ve got to get him some rehab.
I would rather use these wasted hours to produce something of real significant value, or relax completely. Let’s say I used just two of those four hours I spent reading a book. I would be much more relaxed and focused, and nothing would really change in my online world. I’m not a cog in the wheel of the Internet, I don’t need to be present 24/7… This is a VERY liberating thought for me!
The Fix
Here’s the plan I put together:
- I isolated my trigger feeling – the feeling that I have JUST before I check e-mail that tells me, “Go ahead, it’s a good time to check e-mail.” Just by sitting at my computer and thinking about e-mail, I can make that feeling come up on demand. I just spent 20 minutes practicing bringing that feeling up and then standing up and walking away from my computer. This is to condition a new response to the trigger that previously sent me into the inbox.
- I went ahead and disabled e-mail on my iPhone, as well as deleted any other time-wasting apps (including Facebook). I also turned off WIFI and 3G to discourage web surfing.
- I looked at my peak productivity times and what effect they had on e-mail checking. Turns out that after about 6 p.m., my productivity on the computer goes way, way down and I’m much more prone to web surfing or habitual responses.
Using my observations, I came up with these goals:
- Check e-mail ONCE daily at 1:30 pm
- Check Facebook ONCE daily after e-mail
- Check Twitter ONCE daily after Facebook
- Check Forum Threads ONCE daily after Twitter
- And do all of this in under 60 minutes…
- Computer turned off completely by 8 pm.
The Game Plan
I’ve realized that 99% of the e-mail I get is non-critical and non-urgent, and checking frequency shouldn’t matter. I’m not a fan of autoresponders, but beneath my signature with my contact details I’ve attached a new note to all of my outgoing mail that says this:
Note: To increase productivity, I only check e-mail once daily at 1:30 pm. If it’s something that can’t wait until that time, please call me directly. Thanks!
Accountability also plays a huge role in habit formation. I put together a simple sheet to fill out every evening before bed to track my progress and stay aware of my goal. This sheet is staring at me right now from my bulletin board above my computer. Click the picture for a bigger view.
Some Questions to Ask Yourself
- Are you an e-mail addict? Do you find yourself checking e-mail compulsively many times a day?
- Do you know exactly how much time you spend on these low-impact tasks?
- Do you get to the end of your day feeling burned out and unmotivated?
- When you’re not checking e-mail or something else online, does the thought of doing so come up in your mind often?
I’ve completed two days so far, and it has been an extremely productive week. The 30-minute time limit gets me incredibly focused when I’m checking things – it gets you into a “do it now” type of attitude. You have no time to go back to an item laying around in your inbox six or seven times – you do it, delete it or put it on an actionable list as soon as you read it.
The interesting thing is that it all gets quite exciting when you know that your time is running out and you have to move faster. Instant 300% increase in productivity! Sometimes we have to remember that it’s not in the more that brings results, it’s in the less.
This whole post can be summed up like this: Less e-mail + Releasing addiction = Happiness + Productivity.
Are you an e-mail addict?
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