In the spirit of balancing life, I made a conscious decision over a month ago to get a better balance in my life. Just like most middle managers, I was working more hours than officially required (a lot more) but more importantly it had gotten into all parts of my life. When I was on the bus, I was catching up on blog posts which are a combination of personal interests and stuff related to work. And pretty much the same applied for email, Twitter, Facebook and so on. In a way all parts of my life got mixed up in every communication channel that connects me to the outside world and so it ended up mixing up my inner world as well.
So I made 2 decisions. The first one was to make a clearer split between personal and business life. So you might now find me outside our front door ending a phone call with a colleague before stepping in to spend time with my wife and kids. And the phone doesn't go on anymore until the next morning.
But the biggest decision came after Tim Ferris' book The 4-hour workweek came back into my life. I've had this book for years and read through it once thinking how it was a lot of blah blah blah: nice when you don't work for a boss and when you're an American. But while cleaning up my book collection to make room for my iPAD 2, I flicked through it deciding whether I would give it away or not, when I realized it was about much more than kick boxing in Thailand and only working 4 hours per week. It's about gaining full control of your life. Lifestyle design as he calls it.
Well that is something I needed. And I quickly learned that I wasn't anymore; after a 10 year career, 2 kids and a busy personal life, it was time to take back control. And for that, Tim's book is actually a great starting point. While there are many good lessons to learn from the book, I want to start with the one that so far has had the biggest impact on my life: EMAIL and how to take back control over it. OK, maybe he doesn't talk so much about it as I feel he is, but his question
"Am I being productive or just active?"
to me equals emails. For me email is the true never ending story: by the time you handle 4, there are already 7 others screaming for your attention. And as such it became an underlying, constant nagging thing that infected my whole life. Partially because I have this tendency of trying to please everybody and want to help as much people as possible (yes, raised Catholic), partially because of the point raised earlier where I would be checking email constantly on my iPhone (if I wasn't reading them on my laptop of course!). Since I was already aware of this before I reread the book, I decided that for the Elimination part that Tim talks about, I was going to tackle this part of my life first and made the following commitment to myself:
1. I am reading emails only 1 hour per day for the first 2 weeks (until April 15)
2. Then I will only read emails 1 hour every other day (until April 30)
3. I will only read emails on Friday by May 12
I can tell you that I actually skipped step 1 and moved to step 2 right away. The first week I did this was a week in which I was flying out to Austin, Texas on Monday for a week. Let me tell you, 20 hours on a plane the first day you decide not to read any emails while you actually have 257 emails in your inbox waiting, is the best test to get started. It is then I realized what an addiction email truly is. At least once per hour I had the same feeling when I was quitting smoking; that nagging feeling of HAVING TO READ EMAILS. Maybe because I have tried to quit an addiction before, I had planned a lot of other work that needed to get done. And guess what, I did all of it and had enough time to watch a movie on the plane as well. Day 2 was booked with meetings so that made my email addiction easier.
And then the best thing happened. Tuesday evening I couldn't take it any more and I had to have my shot of emails. So I allowed myself the hour I had set aside and believe it or not, I got through all the email I received on those 2 days in 1 hour and 10 minutes!
I've been doing this ever since and I feel great. I have never been so productive although I do miss the occasional question for help. But that's a minor trade off against all the bigger work I can get done.
So for all my colleagues that are reading this, I would like to let you know I'll be reading emails every Tuesday and every Thursday afternoon.
In between I will actually be working.
