My three-day vacation was somehow no vacation at all, except for one thing: my approach to work.
I felt justified in being unavailable at times, didn’t answer every email immediately, shut off IM for blocks of time, and took time to reflect on longer term ideas that I’d been pushing aside for weeks.
This is how I should work all the time.
Dean:
“To succeed we really need to become excellent trainers … of ourselves.”
Brilliant!
I like the elephant analogy too.
Thanks for your comments.
Ann
Ann …
Excellent points you make.
It may be possible that the one item that may have the greatest impact, at least for me, would be to work with the boundaries. Boundaries to me implies making some space, like the space in a room, available and I think that having that space allows for better, perhaps even great, things to happen or at least be far more likely. Space to do our work … space to answer e-mails in our natural rhythm, taking some time to think / reflect, etc.
I am reading “The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt. The book, which I have not yet finished, is about why we do the crazy things we do, and the metaphor he uses throughout the book is that our minds are like a rider on the back of an elephant. The rider (our rational, conscious mind) thinks he/she is in control but the elephant (our automatic responses) really can and will do whatever he/she wants to … the rider is no match for the elephant in this respect. As a result we find like Medea in Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” who is torn for her love for Jason and her duty to her father – “I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.” The rider and the elephant can be in conflict … that is within us there are two minds not just one as we might commonly think of it. The only way to control the elephant is for the rider to train it gradually and over time to respond. To succeed we really need to become excellent trainers … of ourselves. So I really like your habit change model in this light.
This whole area of doing what we know we should do but find so difficult to achieve fascinates me. I wish you the best and hope that you find yourself working in “vacation” mode all the time.
Thanks for you time and thoughts.
Dean
Hello Dean!
I think that’s a GREAT question. Just to be clear, I think that the more responsibility and crazy our environment, the MORE we need to manage it and not let it manage us.
It comes back to good old fashioned time management and boundary setting – and it is really hard! Ironically, I’m convinced I’d do my job better if I could pull this off!
I think it’s like breaking any other habit. Set a couple of rules and just stick with them. Then maybe set a couple more, and so on.
For example, one thing I need to do is shut off immediate notifications that I have email. I should only check email every few hours. No one will die, responses or acknowledgment within a day is MORE than responsive enough for most emails, and if something IS really urgent the sender can try another channel (phone).
My immediate response to most things has created that expectation in those with whom I communicate and it has elevated everything to the same level of urgency. It leaves me no time to think about and plan for the the longer term.
I’m sure there’s one thing you could do to impact the craziness in your life immediately. What is it?
Ann
This is not a smart aleck question … why don’t you work that way all the time? I have had the same thought many times, and I find that getting out of the fast lane / rut / routine is very, very difficult. Thoughts on this?