Article by Cal Newport, one of my favorite "focus" authors
I would be willing to say that Cal Newport's TED Talk entitled "Why You Should Quit Social Media" and book DEEP WORK (2016) got me started on this idea of a Go Slow Life, although I didn't have a name for it at the time.
If you take the 14 minutes to watch the TED Talk, I assure you you'll come out of it wondering just why you spent so much time on Facebook in the past.
I came across a recent article today by the author entitled, "Is Email Making Professors Stupid?" and just by the very title, I was intrigued.
I am plagued by email at work. I have no less than 75 flagged, actionable emails in my inbox at any one time and the only way to catch up on it is to do email when people aren't emailing me, which is outside of the hours of 8-5 M-F. The hours I consider and refer to as "Family Time."
In broad strokes, my workday day looks like the following schedule:
5am - 6:45am - awaken, make coffee, get kids dressed and fed, husband takes them to childcare
6:45 - 8:15am - my time to read, blog, do housework, make breakfast, shower, get dressed, do hair and makeup
8:15 - 8:30 - Commute to work
8:30 - 4:45 - Work
4:45 - 5:15 - pick up kids, drive home (I always end up socializing with the other moms at school for a little bit)
5:30 - Dinner
6:00 - Younger child goes to bed
6:15 - 8:15 - Older child playtime, books, watch videos with him, get ready for bed, lights out
8:15 - 9:00 - Read, laundry, relax
9:00/9:30 - Lights out
So that means the tradeoff of catching up on email and sorting/filing/responding to emails is either time with my family or sleep. It's also the expectation that it's my job to file emails in the electronic client folders for some of the senior executives who don't use the electronic client folders. This would be fine if my job were administrative, but it's not. What separates me in my workplace is my ability to use my brain and prior experience to come up with client solutions that are not commonly in use and readily available. The work I do is largely commodity-based and ubiquitous, and without someone who is actively, strategically thinking on behalf of the client (e.g. me), we are likely to lose the client.
So when I read this headline, even though I'm not a professor, it immediately caught my attention because I feel like the constant checking of email makes me dumb. A few quotes from the article that resonated with me:
"Switching from Task A (say, preparing a course lecture) to Task B (say, responding to “urgent” emails) can significantly reduce your cognitive capacity — essentially making you artificially dumber. Professors are increasingly buffeted by a relentless tide of digital disruptions and onerous administrative demands. A classic sign of bureaucratic malaise is when efforts to keep an organization running begin to crowd out the work that the organization was formed to support in the first place."
"A typical approach to service is to say “yes” to a fire hose of incoming requests until you become so overcommitted that you retreat in desperation to catch up."
Does this sound like your life?
(It sounds like mine most days.)
Does it work for you?
(It doesn't really work for me -- sure I get paid, but I don't feel deep job satisfaction like I wish I could.)
The Go Slow Life includes finding ways to carve out the focus and deliberate cognitive capacity to do your best work, whatever it may be.
There is no current answer to the current email norm, but the author suggests academia can help to influence the sea change that is needed in order to do good work without constant email checking.
xo
Chase
If you take the 14 minutes to watch the TED Talk, I assure you you'll come out of it wondering just why you spent so much time on Facebook in the past.
I came across a recent article today by the author entitled, "Is Email Making Professors Stupid?" and just by the very title, I was intrigued.
I am plagued by email at work. I have no less than 75 flagged, actionable emails in my inbox at any one time and the only way to catch up on it is to do email when people aren't emailing me, which is outside of the hours of 8-5 M-F. The hours I consider and refer to as "Family Time."
In broad strokes, my workday day looks like the following schedule:
5am - 6:45am - awaken, make coffee, get kids dressed and fed, husband takes them to childcare
6:45 - 8:15am - my time to read, blog, do housework, make breakfast, shower, get dressed, do hair and makeup
8:15 - 8:30 - Commute to work
8:30 - 4:45 - Work
4:45 - 5:15 - pick up kids, drive home (I always end up socializing with the other moms at school for a little bit)
5:30 - Dinner
6:00 - Younger child goes to bed
6:15 - 8:15 - Older child playtime, books, watch videos with him, get ready for bed, lights out
8:15 - 9:00 - Read, laundry, relax
9:00/9:30 - Lights out
So that means the tradeoff of catching up on email and sorting/filing/responding to emails is either time with my family or sleep. It's also the expectation that it's my job to file emails in the electronic client folders for some of the senior executives who don't use the electronic client folders. This would be fine if my job were administrative, but it's not. What separates me in my workplace is my ability to use my brain and prior experience to come up with client solutions that are not commonly in use and readily available. The work I do is largely commodity-based and ubiquitous, and without someone who is actively, strategically thinking on behalf of the client (e.g. me), we are likely to lose the client.
So when I read this headline, even though I'm not a professor, it immediately caught my attention because I feel like the constant checking of email makes me dumb. A few quotes from the article that resonated with me:
"Switching from Task A (say, preparing a course lecture) to Task B (say, responding to “urgent” emails) can significantly reduce your cognitive capacity — essentially making you artificially dumber. Professors are increasingly buffeted by a relentless tide of digital disruptions and onerous administrative demands. A classic sign of bureaucratic malaise is when efforts to keep an organization running begin to crowd out the work that the organization was formed to support in the first place."
"A typical approach to service is to say “yes” to a fire hose of incoming requests until you become so overcommitted that you retreat in desperation to catch up."
Does this sound like your life?
(It sounds like mine most days.)
Does it work for you?
(It doesn't really work for me -- sure I get paid, but I don't feel deep job satisfaction like I wish I could.)
The Go Slow Life includes finding ways to carve out the focus and deliberate cognitive capacity to do your best work, whatever it may be.
There is no current answer to the current email norm, but the author suggests academia can help to influence the sea change that is needed in order to do good work without constant email checking.
xo
Chase
Comments
Post a Comment