Most people struggle to process two streams of language simultaneously. If we’re in a crowded restaurant, we can focus on the people at our table - but not the conversations at other tables.
Unless we hear our name.
Something in us - something subconscious - is alert to the sound of our own name, even from across a room.
Opening my email inbox feels like being in a restaurant where every person is shouting my name.
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In Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen talks about how to engage with email so as to avoid overloading our working memory. Every time a task arrives on our desk, he says, we should do something with it (in Allen’s lingo: do it, delegate it, defer it, or drop it). In other words, get it out of our heads and into a system that we trust for managing our responsibilities.
It’s a good framework, and I’ve tried to implement it over the years. Despite my efforts, though, my inbox continues to grow (current count: 200+ unaddressed emails).
And part of the reason, I’m seeing, is that I need to be more strategic about when and why I open my inbox. Sometimes, I just jump in there - out of boredom, to see what’s new, or with the vague intention of ‘being productive.’
Once my inbox is open, though, I’m in the restaurant. I hear my name from nearby, from over there, from around a corner. Each subject line is a shiny object. I’m subject to drift, to waste time and mental energy task-switching between a dozen unrelated items across different areas of my life.
What was I doing here again?
The solution, I think, is to clarify what I’m doing before I open my inbox - to know, going in, what I’m aiming to accomplish. Is it to address the handful of items that require urgent attention? Am I writing a longer, reflective message to a close friend? Or am I sifting through the mail, paying bills and ticking off small tasks?
Any of these answers can be good ones - but if I don’t have any answer, I’m less likely to get somewhere I actually want to go.
