In my last couple of posts, I have talked about my “de-mailing” over Christmas, and it was hard, then easy, but ultimately rewarding.
What was the process that enabled this to happen? There were three things:
- Path of Least Resistance. In “The Happiness Advantage”, Shawn Achor talks about “the path of least resistance.” He says that he pondered why he never practised guitar. It was just too much effort to get it out of the cupboard. Not a lot of effort, but too much. So, he changed things, and kept it in his living room, right by the sofa. This small change made a massive difference to the frequency of his practice. It almost became difficult not to pick the guitar up. So, if we want to develop a good habit, put it on our daily path, in our field of vision. And the reverse is true. If we want to stop doing something, make it hard to start. So I moved the Mail icon from the toolbar on my iPad and buried it in a folder in a folder on page 3. It wasn’t impossibly difficult to get in there and look at email, but it was certainly inconvenient. After a while, I forgot about it, because I didn’t see it every day.
- Clear “Out of Office” message. My email OoO reply said “I will be away until 6 January 2014 and unavailable by phone and email until that date.” Pretty clear, I thought. No-one complained about its directness.
- Clear voicemail message. My voicemail message said “I am out of the office until 6th January. If your call relates to a work matter, please don’t leave a voicemail, but call back on 6th January. If it is a personal matter, please leave a voicemail and I will get back to you.” Again, direct. But no-one complained, and a few people called back on the 6th January.
The point of all this is that you have to create the fire-break. If you fail to clear a good gap between you and the flames of distraction, those flames will jump over and spoil your holiday. I managed to clear the firebreak, and it worked.