Can’t. Take it. Any. More.

~ Live & Learn

Sisyphus“If you feel sucked into a bottomless guilt vortex every time you look at your email inbox, this post is not for you. If you struggle to keep up with a deluge of 50, 100, 400 emails every day, go away. If you’ve clicked on this looking for tips in curtailing this incursion of correspondence, leave now. This post isn’t for you. It’s for the other guy. The one who responds immediately to every message. The one who sleeps with his smartphone.  The one who checks email on vacation.  You know who you are. And while this may be hard for you to hear, it needs to be said: you’re ruining everything for the rest of us.  Every time you check your email while on vacation you make it just a little bit harder for me not to. Every time you fire off an email at 11pm, you make a capillary explode in one of my eyeballs. Every time you send me an email asking, "Did you get my email?" — especially if you sent said email within the last 24 hours — I drown a kitten in a bag.  Okay, that’s not true. No animals were harmed in the writing of this post. Except for this particular human animal, who has gotten to a point with her email where she just. Can’t. Take it. Any. More.  Sisyphus had a better chance of keeping that boulder on top of that hill than I do of keeping on top of my email…I will never, never, never have more time for email, next week or any other week, no matter how much false hope I harbor. Also, I think there are better ways for me to spend 3 hours out of a (purportedly) 40-hour work week.”

Read more of this great post @ HBR Blog Network: The Responsiveness Trap

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29 thoughts on “Can’t. Take it. Any. More.”

  1. Hell yeah! One reason I have no Facebook, instant messenger and I like the simple life on the internet.

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  2. No.Freaking.Kidding. I am never, ever, ever, going to be all caught up on other people’s posts. Never. The writers won’t stop writing so I can catch up!!

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  3. Ha Ha Ha Guilty as well. But I love blogging so I try to comment or like on each email I receive. Of course I don’t work.

    BE ENCOURAGED! BE BLESSED!

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  5. I feel if I don’t answer those emails in a timely fashion something in me will pop. It has become so bad once my blackberry vibrates my hand automatically drops to my side to view or answer that stupid email. I need help.

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  6. I, too, fight the siren call of the smartphone. My iPad is never more than 10 feet away from me at any given point in the day. It’s really kind of ridiculous. I have studiously avoided diving into Twitter, as I know that is a black hole from which I will never emerge. :-/. There are so many great blogs out there that I don’t know which way to turn. I actually felt RELIEVED last year when I found myself on a tiny island in the British West Indies where my phone didn’t work and the Internet was spotty. All I could do was relax….sigh. 😉

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  7. Yup, guilty as well, what’s that, oh so and so just texted me…what is that, oh man, three more posts just camr in…what? oh OK, I can do that … four more ‘dings’ to the inbox,,,AAARRRGGGHHH!

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  9. Just reading the comments is stressful – time to escape – and then be stressed all over when I have to deal with the consequences of not dealing with the original messages.

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  11. This is the best post I’ve read in a long time. Thanks for sharing and for helping me validate why I quit my high stress job a year ago! =) Keep up the great blogging.

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  13. Oh, sigh. I’m a week behind with my emails re wordpress posts, hence only just commenting on this one of yours. Might I add, your stockpiled posts are worth hanging onto, a bit like a stash of halva or homemade fudge to get out and indulge just at the right moment 🙂

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