**first a note..historically I have posted “Writing I Love” posts on Tuesdays, and “Movies with Meaning” posts on Wednesdays. Effective this week, I’m iterating a change. My writing and movie posts will continue, simply on weekends, leaving Monday to Friday for evolving in my usual eclectic way my themes and posts around #OpenLeadership
What if you waited at least overnight to reply to all your emails and messages?
What Tom? Are you crazy? I can’t do that!
Really? Yes…
Prominent uses of messaging apps (Whatsapp etc) only came in the last 5 years. Emails only came into regular use less than 25 years ago. Before that, we had faxes for about 15 years, and before that, we had (gasp) “snail mail”. We even used to use the phone rather than texting people to communicate. Really, we did, I promise you.
I started my working career in 1986. We hand wrote letters on yellow ruled paper and sent the drafts in vacuum tubes to the “typing pool”, then when they came back up we signed them and they went to the mail room. Faxes were occasional, so phone calls were frequent both internally and externally. Changed days and not all change is positive progress.
Our world is moving so, so fast, and all too often I feel we sacrifice quality for quantity, speed for thoughtfulness. The results? All too often more does not mean better, sometimes “less is more”.
Think for a moment. Who are the wisest, most sage people you know? Now, who are the people you know who take the most time to patiently listen to a conversation, who often speak last in a group, who then seem to have something to say that everyone listens to? I often see a real correlation there.
Our electronic conversations (notably email and messaging) encourage us to reply instantly, to give both ourselves and the recipient an instant fix. It is like being in person with someone and the two of you reply to each other without taking any time at all to sit with questions asked, to process. Social conversation can be that back and forth, that “banter”, but sometimes there is real power in allowing space to develop, to say nothing, to sit with another while they consider a question, to marinate, to process.
When I am in the role as a coach, often I will sit in full presence and listen deeply for a long time, with only occasionally “taking the mic”, and then to ask a story or inject a story to provoke more thought so I can listen more. So few people in our lives offer us that full presence, sometimes the most powerful part of that role for people is for them to freely express and work through their thoughts. Such a luxury in our fast response world!
So, what if, as an experiment, you decided for a week (yes, a whole week!) to wait at least overnight before replying to emails and texts. Sure, some may be absolutely routine and not need that attention, but do it anyway. Unless something is absolutely vitally urgent, leave it overnight.
While in that process, see what happens for you. What do you observe in yourself? A sense of addiction withdrawal nervousness perhaps? Also perhaps a slowing down of your thinking that adds depth and value? Oh, and your friends and colleagues may start to worry about you if you are normally super responsive… tell them you are experimenting with waiting a day before replying to messages. Yup, they may call you crazy too!
I’d love to hear how you get on with this. Will you last a week? What were your key learnings?
Am I suggesting you do this always? No, simply try it for a week and see what changes you wish to make after that.
In closing, a few specific thoughts and tips around slowing down the constant stream of communications :
- Whatsapp – turn off the read notifications. Who determined that communications have to be synchronous, that people get to see when we read their message, plus why do we need to know when they’ve read it? Turn off those notifications and lose the “fix” of knowing who reads your messages and vice versa. Make such messages asynchronous, remove the pressure on both sides to make a quick reply
- Smartphone notifications – turn them off. All of them. Make it that you consciously have to check your email/messaging apps to see if there are messages. Be the master of your communications, not a slave. Oh, and on your laptop, if you see a notification when an email or message comes in. Same. Turn them off.
- One more step on smartphones. I haven’t quite gone this far, but one tip is to remove ALL apps from the home screen, including the bottom bar of frequently used apps. Make it so that when you open your phone you have to consciously swipe to the next screen.