A week ago, I began the first exercise from David M. Levy’s Mindful Tech book, and started observing my e-mail use.  Levy encourages his readers to share both their observations and personal guidelines they’ve established after completing the exercise, and, well, I need to write a blog post today anyways, so here goes 🙂

Observations

It didn’t take long for me to notice several patterns with my e-mail use:

1. I check e-mail automatically, as a routine when I’m bored or when I don’t have anything immediately to do in the moment.  Over the last week, I noticed that I’ll instinctually reach for my phone to check e-mail (and social media notifications) first thing in the morning, but also, when I’m the passenger in a car (even when someone I love is talking to me!), when I’m walking on the street, waiting for a light to change, when I don’t feel like doing something that I should be doing. I do this with social media too, but I start with e-mail, which I feel more justified doing as it’s ostensibly “productive.”
2. E-mail is generally very stressful for me, but much more so when I’m on my mobile device.  My phone is great for many things, but it is not ideal for e-mail.  Over this last week, I felt my anxiety rise when my e-mail was loading slowly (or not loading at all), and when I saw an e-mail come in on my mobile device that I couldn’t respond to right away (or that it would be extremely inefficient for me to respond to using the device itself). When these things happen, I get SUPER anxious, which translates into tense shoulders and short breaths. I’ll either keep checking/ refreshing until I can get to the e-mail I need or I’ll inefficiently respond so I can feel like it’s off my plate.  If I don’t respond, I am afraid I’ll forget to respond.
3. I feel obligated to get back to people as soon as I see their messages.  My work e-mail is the most stressful, followed by my gmail, which is stressful because it’s the one I’m most likely to forget to check or respond to, and email gets lost quickly in that account (i.e. I don’t have a good system to track who I need to respond to).  I am actually the best with my personal yahoo e-mail account which is basically my e-mail where all the Groupon, Target, charity, listserv e-mails come.  I feel ZERO stress checking that account, even when there are 57 notifications because if I start to get stressed out, I literally just delete almost every single e-mail and it feels cathartic. In fact, that e-mail makes me feel awesome because with a few checks and the trash button, I’ve just dealt with all those e-mails! Sometimes, I will check/ read the e-mails in that account, but I don’t feel beholden to them, like I do with my other e-mail.

Personal Guidelines

What can help me to use my e-mail more effectively?  Levy is clear in his text that personal guidelines are just that, personal.  They work for an individual and aren’t necessarily generalizable.  I’m going to play around with these personal guidelines for e-mail and see how they work for me, at least for the next couple of weeks, and then I’ll reconsider and revise as necessary:

1. Put a pause on pushing e-mail.  On my phone, I changed my mail settings to fetch e-mail manually.  This means that I won’t automatically see the number on my mail icon.  I’ll need to open the app and ask it to download my e-mail. As a bonus game, I’m challenging myself to check only when my Apple Watch signals for me to stand (so, a maximum of once an hour, but not in the hours when I’m actually active and getting something done). When I’m focused on a task, I will quit my work e-mail app on my computer and only open it when either: a) I’m done with my task or b) I get my stand cue.
2. Don’t respond to work e-mail or gmail on my phone.  I thought about deleting both accounts from my phone, but the calendar syncing is really helpful. So, I’m going to try just being intentional about not responding to these e-mails on my phone which I hope will help me establish a pattern of addressing them when I’m more present to my e-mails, on my computer.
3. When reaching for my phone, pause, and ask why and if that’s really what I want to be doing? In reflecting on the past week and on my present “vacation brain,” I know that I use my phone (e-mail and social media particularly) to avoid things I don’t want to do, or to avoid being present.  I don’t think this is always bad, as sometimes my brain needs a rest, and I work extremely hard. However, I also think that being mindful and finding alternatives that feel more intentional and less stressful could be helpful.  It’s not necessarily that mindless, automatic habits are bad, it’s that this one actually can be really counterproductive.

So, that’s the first exercise.  I’ll keep you all updated as I continue to move forward in mindfulness….