Sunday, August 21, 2011

Rebecca, Day 7: Limiting my communications

I'm back!

Day 7:
Limit your communications. Our lives these days are filled with a vast flow of communications: email, IM, cell phones, paper mail, Skype, Twitter, forums, and more. It can take up your whole day if you let it. Instead, put a limit on your communications: only do email at certain times of the day, for a certain number of minutes (I recommend twice a day, but do what works for you). Only do IM once a day, for a limited amount of time. Limit phone calls to certain times too. Same with any other communications. Set a schedule and stick to it.
Limit communications? Who, me??

I have an iPhone, and I constantly use it to check facebook, my email, and my google reader RSS feed (Day 60, I'm looking at you!). Whenever I'm bored--waiting in line or whatever--I check them reflexively.

On the positive side, I'm pretty easy to reach; I respond quickly to emails and facebook messages. But maybe it would be simpler to limit these things, scheduling them if possible--to not be connected all the time, and to let down time be downtime.

I've tried a couple of things already:

EXPERIMENT #1: Following the tip above, a few days ago, I set two daily alarms (12:45 and 4 pm) on my phone to prompt me to "check email." I decided not to check email at any other time. But there's always been some reason to. Plus, I always seem to be in the middle of something I don't want to stop when the alarm tells me to check my email. (The lack of a routine in summer makes working with the alarms difficult.) Experiment fail!

EXPERIMENT #2: A couple of days ago, I deleted the facebook and the google reader apps from my iPhone. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and I hesitated (isn't one of the reasons we love our smartphones is their apps?).

The result: It's been refreshing to have some space! It reminds me of when I've traveled abroad for vacation and was worried about having no data plan (or a very limited one), but then kind of liked it. Perhaps I was splitting my attention too much and didn't realize it. Interesting!

So, what next?

EXPERIMENT #3: I'm going to run with the "vacation" idea and take an email vacation. The semester starts soon, so it's now or never. (Or, I suppose, now or December, when the semester is over.) Today, I am turning off my email accounts on my phone, and I am setting an autoresponder on both my work and personal accounts, stating that I will be offline for the next week.

Although I will actually check email now and then, as I will really need to send some work-related messages (I wouldn't want to ignore my lovely publisher!), I'll limit email-checking to when I'm at my desk.

Wish me luck! And if you need to reach me? Just call me. :)


1 comment:

  1. I love the idea about setting alarms for when to check all of your online information. I'm attempting to cut out push notifications and e-mail/text buzzes and only allow myself to check these things in specified time increments. This alarm idea is a good notification that will hopefully allow me to focus on down time, or on work, without constantly having to check my phone to see if I'm allowed to check my phone. :)

    In fact, I'm going to go update my post write now and include your idea as part of it!

    ReplyDelete

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