On Email and Facebook Habits

Apparently, it's time to re-think my email and Facebook habits. They've gotten a little silly. Here's the back story:

This is what my email habit used to be like, before simplicity:
6:00-6:30am - Alarm went off. I immediately went to the email app on my phone. What if I had missed something overnight??!! I read it, but don't respond or sort it - it just stayed in the inbox to deal with later.

9:00am - Now that I was at work, I actually responded to those emails I read earlier and sorted them out of the inbox.

Throughout the day, at ridiculously short intervals, I would check the email.... right up until I was in bed ready to go to sleep. But at some point in the evening, I would stop responding and sorting, just leaving them in the inbox, unless it was something really urgent.

I think that "something really urgent" might have happened once? Ever?

But what would happen was this: I would get an email at 9pm that I would worry about for the next twelve hours, that would keep me up at night, that I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about. Or I would wake up and the first thing I would see was an email that worried me. (I worry easily.)

And every one of those emails could have waited until 9am the next morning.

This is what my Facebook habit used to be like, before simplicity:
Every time I checked my email, I would check Facebook too. In case there was something good. What was the "something good" I was looking for? Still not sure. It mostly left me feeling depressed, angry, or like I had just wasted a bunch of time.



Yep, that was me.


A few months ago, I adopted new habits, in the interest of simplicity:
Read emails ONLY AT WORK, where I can immediately respond and sort. Don't open the email app outside of work. Don't open it! Leave it alone! Trust that if there's an emergency, someone will call rather than email. On the Sabbath (which I take on Fridays), don't open the email app at all. At all! No touchy!

I made my Facebook app a little bit harder to get to on my phone, and turned off the notifications. I briefly checked it each morning ONLY AT WORK to see if anything really earth-shattering had happened, gave myself a rough time limit, and then closed it for the rest of the day. I didn't open the app on my phone at all.



These new habits were terrific! I loved them. They made my whole day better. And I never missed anything important.

A few weeks ago, I totally lost these wonderful new habits. I'm finding myself, again, checking email and Facebook as I wake up in the morning, way too often throughout the day, and way too late at night. Why? It makes me sad and anxious and wastes a lot of time to do this. So why do it?

As with all the things that keep us away from simplicity, it's about unfounded fears:

• The fear that if I don't check email and Facebook, something will happen that will be out of my control. The reality is that things will happen out of my control whether I check my email or not.
• The fear that if I don't check email and Facebook, someone will have a problem that they can resolve without me, and I won't be needed. Seriously? Dumb. But still there - we all need to be needed.
• The fear that if I don't check email and Facebook, something disastrous is happening that I'm responsible for, and I won't know about it until it's too late. There's an emergency that needs my immediate attention, and if I fail, then people will think less of me.
• The fear that I'm disconnected from people I love. Ironically, of course, checking email and Facebook too much tends to create disconnection rather than connection.
• The fear that I don't have something to do. Too often, I do this just out of boredom. I'm between one thing and the next. I'm waiting for somebody or for a particular time. What do I do in the meantime? Pull out the phone and check the email and Facebook. But in truth, it's okay to not have something to do. Some of our best moments come at those times.

So, my friends, this is my commitment to going back to much healthier, simpler habits regarding email and Facebook. See you at 9am! (But not tomorrow, 'cause it's the Sabbath.)