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The Email Experiment Day 2

Posted on August 30, 2011 by jessicahlawrence

Ah, the irony. Yesterday I wrote a post about the email experiment I’m starting to find a better way to deal with my overflowing inboxes…and then I was notified that my post had been selected to be featured on FreshlyPressed (the WordPress.com homepage)…and my inbox began overflowing like never before.

I didn’t see this as a bad thing though – getting notices that people were liking my post and leaving me comments meant that people were interested in exchanging thoughts and ideas with me, which is a good thing. I see responding to blog comments as work that means something, which is somewhat different than a fair amount of standard email work.

So how did the first day of my experiment go? I loved my 3-hour head start. I stayed out of my inbox, other than one quick glance at my work inbox to see if a time-sensitive email I had been waiting for came in. I got a big project done I had been procrastinating on and got some other work done that would have taken me twice as long to complete if I had been popping in and out of my inbox simultaneously.

I’ve been doing the same thing this morning, and so far so good – I just finished another big project. I did have to look at and respond to a couple of emails, but I actually surprised myself with how disciplined I could be in just looking at those emails and not getting sucked into to responding to more.

My conclusion so far: even when we think that we can handle flipping back and forth between email, Twitter, Facebook etc. while also working on a project, we can’t. And everything ends up taking about four times as long when you try to do it all once.

That sentiment is echoed in a post on Tim Ferriss’ blog (thanks to a number of comments from yesterday pointing me in that direction), which was actually written by one of my favorite bloggers, Leo Babauta (of ZenHabits). Leo’s post gives some great tips for dealing with email. Enjoy!

 

 

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The Email Experiment Day 1: The 3-Hour Head Start

Posted on August 29, 2011 by jessicahlawrence

Back in June, I wrote a post called Email Mercy. I talked about how giving over huge chunks of my day to email means that I have almost no time to think and create things that will last much longer than the short-term firedrills that email creates. And I lamented that I really don’t like living a life where the most meaningful interactions are the ones that happen the least frequently.

At the end of the post I said I was going to do something to start tackling the issue, but I wasn’t sure what it was yet. Two months later, I’m still not sure, but after having many more freakouts about how email is causing slow death, I’m finally going to start experimenting to see if I can figure out any solutions that will bring a little peace to my inbox and help me get back to  the important stuff. 

So here we go with Day 1. For the next few days I’m going to experiment with one of the most common suggestions I’ve read for dealing with you inbox: don’t check your email until noon. But I’m going to tweak it just a bit, because for those of us who work from home and may end up working until 3 or 4 in the morning sometimes, noon would be the equivalent of 9 am, which would basically mean we would still be getting out of bed and practically jumping right into email.

So instead, I’m going to call this the 3-Hour Head Start: no reading email until I have at least three hours of work on projects each day. If I have meetings during that period, those count as “work other than email.” Most of my meetings and conference calls have a specific purpose and allow me a chance to connect with someone, so I’m going to let them exist in that 3-Hour Head Start space for now. 

Approaching my day this way makes a lot of sense for a couple of reasons:

  • From a neuroscience perspective, I’ll be taking care of the most important thinking tasks (projects that require my full attention) when my brain is fresh and energized, not when it is drained from staring at email.
  • I’ll be able to concentrate on actually getting key projects done because I won’t be responding to the firedrills email creates, pulling me in a million different directions. 
This already feels like it might be a little bit difficult…my fingers are twitching to get into my inbox…I think because it turns out that I have a slightly strange relationship with email: I get incredibly frustrated trying to deal with it on one hand, but on the other hand I think I subconsciously know that I can use it as a a very helpful procrastination tool if I’m a little too tired to deal with real work. 
Well, here it goes…off to not check my inbox…

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Regret Me Not Project Day 135: Actionable Empathy

Posted on August 14, 2011 by jessicahlawrence

I didn’t really understand how important dedicated bike lanes were until I tried riding a bike in a part of the city that doesn’t have them.

I didn’t understand how crappy the software was that some of my staff had to use every day until I sat down and spent a few hours trying to use it myself.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t been empathetic about these situations in the past. I always thought bike lanes were a good idea. And I certainly listened to my team when they complained about their software.

But I didn’t really, truly understand deep down in my gut until I actually became the biker and the software user.

Before, I simply had empathy.

After, I had actionable empathy – empathy that would move me to do something, to fix something, or to at least be prepared to shout my support instead of keeping it quietly to myself.

 

 

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Facebook Makes Me Feel Like Crap

Posted on August 11, 2011 by jessicahlawrence

A nice piece by Stephanie Rosenbloom came out in the New York Times today about the ways in which people are managing the growing number tools we have to connect with each other online.

It was fun for me to included in the piece, especially because being interviewed kickstarted a lot of thinking for me about which platforms I use and why.

It comes down to this:

Twitter makes me feel good, so I use it.

Facebook makes me feel like crap, so I don’t.

As Stephanie mentions in the article, I’ve boiled down my personal social media use decision making to one simple question: will it enhance my life?

Twitter gives me constant positive experiences on almost a daily basis: not only did it help me find the big things in my life (my job, an apartment, and my boyfriend – more on that whole story in an upcoming post), but it has helped me with small things too, from finding a mover to deciding which museum to visit on a rainy day.

Facebook just doesn’t do that for me. I get done with a session of scrolling through Facebook and not only do I feel like an hour of my life was just sucked into a black whole, but I usually also end up feeling worse about myself then I did when I got on.

When I really think about it, other than reconnecting me with a few key friends from my past and giving me occasional warm fuzzies over a baby or a cute puppy, Facebook really hasn’t done anything to enhance my life.

And apparently I’m not the only one who feels that way. In conversations I’ve been having over the past few days, as the words “Facebook makes me feel like crap” cross my lips, I’ve seen lights of recognition going off in the faces of the people I’m talking to. They’ve felt the same way, but couldn’t pinpoint it and didn’t know how to explain it.

Here’s why I think Facebook may make us feel like crap:

  1. It isn’t useful. It has never helped me solve a problem, answer a question, find something I’m looking for, or meet someone new.
  2. It’s too slow. I like conversations that feel like growing surges of energy, and that usually only happens when people respond back and forth quickly. Facebook to me is like watching a tennis match in which someone lobs the ball over the net and the other person just sits there and stares at it for a few hours before hitting the ball back, if they even decide to hit it back at all.
  3. It’s a socially acceptable form of bragging. Even when people are well-intentioned and are really meaning to share and not brag, sharing can end up feeling like bragging to the reader, just like a never ending Christmas update letter. Facebook’s slowness and lack of usefulness seem to amplify how much sharing starts to feel like bragging. I think what usually ends up making people feel like crap is that when they get off Facebook they feel like they just spent a lot of time finding out how inferior and less awesome their life is compared to everyone else’s. The picture isn’t accurate, but it feels crappy nonetheless.

I say all of this not to dissuade people from using Facebook. In fact, if Facebook makes you feel good, go for it.

But that’s exactly my point. Sometimes we start using these tools because we feel like we have to. And other than a few business cases where it may make sense to be on a platform you don’t love so much in order to reach your customer base, the majority of the time, what makes the most sense is to use a platform you like and that enhances your life and makes you feel good.  At their best, online social platforms facilitate and amplify building connections, both online and off. In the end, what we’re all actually striving for are meaningful relationships that help us have meaningful lives, so use the tools that help you do that.

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Regret Me Not for Good

Posted on August 10, 2011 by jessicahlawrence

My birthday was back in May. That day was supposed to mark the end of my Regret Me Not Project, the point at which I would have had all the experiences, learned all the skills, read all the books, and watched all the movies that I had on my lists.

I’ve done a lot in the past nine months, including having lots of experiences that have scared the crap out of me. I took a kiteboarding lesson…I did roller derby…I took improv classes and then performed in front of a live audience…I took voice lessons.

After growing up with asthma and never even being able to finish a 9-minute run in high school gym class, I started running the 3.5 mile loop near my house.  I finally went back to dancing again and for a couple months before I moved to NYC, spent three hours in the dance studio every Monday night, taking jazz, ballet and hip-hop back to back. I took a series of salsa and lindy lop lessons.

I took Pure Barre classes, a meditation class and a Cheese 101 class. I had my first mushrooms, oysters, and real sushi.

There are still a lot books I haven’t read and movies I haven’t watched. And I still haven’t had a drumming lesson, or become an expert on wine or craft cocktails, but I happen to know just the perfect person now to help me with those things. ;  )

And I think my desire to the learn how to play the guitar has morphed into a desire to learn how to play the fiddle, and now that I’m moving into a new apartment, one things I’m most excited about is that it has a kitchen big enough to allow me to expand my cookware beyond one frying pan.

Other than still needing to go to a spa and a beach bonfire, now that I’m really looking at it, I actually did almost everything on my experience and skill lists.

And in the end, the point of this whole experiment wasn’t just to do all of these things, it was to change my mindset and the way that I approached life in the process. I wanted to stop living in the “when” (putting off truly living until some nebulous point the future) and I wanted to start living in the “now.”

That shift of perspective occurred in much more dramatic way then I imagined.

My Regret Me Not Project woke me up and opened my heart. It made me much more keenly aware of who I am and what it is that inspires me. I’m able to be so much more present in everything I experience and am much quicker to say “yes” to experiencing something new, which changed everything about how I move through life.

And I knew all of this was important, but I then I came across this blog post being passed around on Twitter, and it became even more clear just how important the work I had been doing was.  On her blog, Bronnie Ware, who had worked for many years with people in palliative care, posted the top five regrets that the patients she supported had on their deathbeds:

  1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
  2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
  3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
  4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
  5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Without knowing it when I started out, my Regret Me Not Project was really about avoiding those five regrets.

And that’s exactly why I’m going to keep going. I don’t believe in bucket lists because they let people off the hook too much – they still allow you to overwork and lose touch with friends and ignore living until the point when you’re almost dead.

So I’m going to keep posting about whatever I’m learning and experiencing that fits into the Regret Me Not philosophy alongside my other thoughts because I never want to lose this mindset.

I’m thinking a lot now about how I want this project to evolve as I evolve and I can’t wait to share some of those thoughts and plans with you as I get a little more of the thinking done about it.

Regret. Me. Not.

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Regret Me Not Project Day 133: Email Mercy

Posted on June 16, 2011 by jessicahlawrence

I’ve been thinking a lot about email lately (and it turns out, so have a number of other people like TED’s Chris Anderson and Seth Godin).

I’ve been thinking about email not only because I have overflowing inboxes, but because I’ve realized that email is a tremendous source of daily guilt for me.

The guilt comes from wanting to be able to respond to everyone in a timely manner, but having these horrifying moments when I realize that somehow an entire week has gone by (or even two weeks or…oyyyyy…even a month) since someone emailed me. And there the email is, sitting in my inbox, waiting for me to hit reply.

I picture the person sitting on the other end of their computer, wondering why I haven’t responded yet.

I have been that person, waiting for a response from someone, making up reasons in my head for why they haven’t responded yet, like:

  • They don’t like me
  • I said something offensive
  • I did something offensive
  • Whatever I emailed them about isn’t important to them
  • They aren’t really my friend after all
  • They’re slacking off
  • They’re busy
  • Their inbox is overflowing

After ruminating about all of those potential reasons, the only ones that ever seem to turn out to actually be true are the last two.

Thinking about it a little further, the main reason I don’t reply back to people in a timely manner is a combo of being busy and having an overflowing inbox, plus something else: because I care about how I respond and get very few emails that can be responded to in just a couple of words, writing a thoughtful response takes time and a fairly significant amount of energy, both of which seem to be in diminishing supply.

In addition, to be totally honest, sometimes I end up rebelling against my inbox in favor of connecting with people in person. I know that email can help facilitate and initiate those in-person meetings, but at the same time, as the amount of time that I spend responding to email increases, the amount of time that I have for grabbing coffee with someone decreases dramatically.

Never mind that giving over huge chunks of my day to email means that I have almost no time to think and create things that will last much longer than the short-term firedrills that email creates.

I end up hating email because it takes me away from the things that matter.

I think everyone is getting to their breaking point. I’ve noticed that response times have been slowing down across all platforms – from email to Twitter to texting.

I used to get incredibly annoyed and think that people were really rude if they didn’t respond immediately when I texted them. Since everyone carried their cell phones around all the time, it seemed implausible that anyone would ever have a reason for waiting for hours before texting me back

And then one day I realized that I had let a whole day go by after I had received a text from a close friend, and I still hadn’t responded yet.

That was when I knew something was really going wrong.

Then I realized I hadn’t talked to my parents in almost two weeks.

And then I realized I hadn’t talked to a good friend in California for months, and the only time I ended up being able to catch up with her was while I was trapped on a five hour ferry boat ride in which my service kept cutting out because I was in the middle of the ocean.

I had to be in the middle of the ocean in order to finally find the time to talk to someone I care about a lot? There is something very, very wrong about that.

I really don’t like living a life where the most meaningful interactions are the ones that happen the least frequently.

And now that I think about, I can’t remember a single time when email alone has been the platform for a meaningful social interaction. It has helped facilitate interactions in other settings, but I don’t know that I’ve ever walked away from an email exchange thinking “man, that was powerful” and feeling incredibly fulfilled.

So, what do we do? There are days when I feel like I’m going to literally die under a pile of email. And I know that there are a lot others who feel the same way. But it seems like everyone feels stuck with it – like because we were given the tool, we have to use it and this is just our fate and the way that the world is.

I’m contemplating a few things that I might do to deal with this problem, but I’m not sure what exactly I’m going to do yet.

In the meantime, I’ll raise the white flag and say that if you don’t reply to an email of mine for a really long time, I’ll understand. I won’t assume that you are slacking. I will assume that what’s going on with you is the same thing that’s going on with me.

Let’s all have a little email mercy on each other.

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Regret Me Not Project Day 132: Interview with Catharina Bruns of workisnotajob.

Posted on May 31, 2011 by jessicahlawrence

Yay! Today I’m soooooo excited to feature an interview I did recently with Catharina Bruns who runs workisnotajob., a concept and design studio that not only does outstanding design work but also serves up amazing doses of inspiration and loving kick-in-the-pants reminders of what’s truly important.

I had been following Catharina on Twitter for a while, and finally got the opportunity to meet her while we were both working out of the Loosecubes headquarters the other week.  We got into a discussion about a blog post I had just written about the strange habit of people to compete with each other over prizes that don’t actually matter that much (like having more Facebook friends than anyone you know). Cath had some really interesting things to say about what motivates her, so I asked her if I could interview her, and these are her thoughtful responses. 

Me: We were talking the other day about people being motivated by somewhat arbitrary prizes (like having more Twitter followers than someone else or earning more money) – you said that those things never really cross your mind as motivators. Since those aren’t factors, what does drive you? 

Cath: I just strongly believe that we all should contribute to the world by living our individual talents and make things that we feel passionate about happen. We should use this life to satisfy ourselves with our work and help others along the way. I don’t understand how it is motivating to look at other people’s achievements. I personally don’t see competitors, I only learn from other and see the  work I want to do. And to do the work and the challenge to create my own path and fulfill a purpose – constantly motivates me. 

Me: Do you think you’ve been motivated by the same things as a kid or has that changed over time? 

Cath: Well, I certainly didn’t call it “work” back then but I always thought that I need to “do something” to express myself and loved it when others were interesting in the way they were doing stuff. I was so busy with trying to understand the world and how I make sense in all this – I am obviously still learning and think if you do the work you love (aka do something that leads to something you can work with) it really helps you to understand your purpose. And motivation I think has a lot to do with knowing your purpose.

Me: You mentioned when we were talking that you are able to be authentically excited for someone else’s success. A lot of people have trouble with that. What is your philosophy or approach to life that allows you to celebrate the success of others so easily? 

Cath: This might not be an exciting answer but: Firstly, there is room for everyone. The more people do interesting things, the better. But also: It just doesn’t even occur to me that other people’s success etc is in relation to my own journey.  Clearly, everyone has their own background, reasons, gifts and challenges and to compare your dreams, achievements or your struggles with someone else in the world is to do a disservice to the uniqueness of both of you. I love when people work on what they love and get rewarded for their work – I want to encourage everyone to be on that journey and even if you don’t aspire to do great things, I think you should! I think to do what you individually can is crucial for the greater good,  so go and live your dream already. And you better not compare yourself to others on the way because even if it seems someone else’s life path is similar to yours, it is not. I wish you great success!

Me: There is more emphasis now on finding work that is directly connected to your passion. Do you feel like you have a definitive passion? If so, when did you discover what it was and what was the process like to get there? 

Cath: I am convinced that the things that come naturally to you, that make hours pass like minutes, that make you feel alive – that is where your passion lies. As anyone else, I am very passionate about some stuff and pretty ignorant to a lot of other things. I actually believe, indifference is as important as passion. To actively explore the areas that you feel passionate about sometime seem to be in conflict with what society suggests you should pursue and what’s “realistic”- that’s why a lot of people end up in jobs they hate, spend money they don’t have and do things that kill their spirit.  So we need to ask ourselves in who’s reality do we want to live in? We need to realize that we don’t have to be what other people expect us to be and that we don’t have to comply with other people’s structure. I do what I love because I believe, anything else is not right for me and not helpful for anyone else either. When I freed myself from the thought I had to “work they way the world works” and learned to embrace my own way of doing things, I was able to pursue my passion. 

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Can You Kick It? – Making Kickstarter Projects Come to Life

Posted on May 13, 2011 by jessicahlawrence

I love Kickstarter.

Having spent many years writing grants and trying to find funding for non-profit projects, I realize how much of a gap there is in funding available for small projects or projects that don’t meet grant guidelines, but are still providing something inspiring, or moving, or even life-changing.

I’m excited to be working on an event that is highlighting some of those types of projects, but instead of just experiencing the projects online, we’re providing an opportunity to get to meet the people behind the projects in person.

Kick It! – Ideas in Action is happening in Brooklyn on May 21. It’s a chance to see the genius and creativity of people in the New York community and support their work.

If you’re in New York, you should come by. It will be interesting and fun and you’ll probably leave pretty inspired.

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Regret Me Not Project Day 131: An Infinite Supply

Posted on May 6, 2011 by jessicahlawrence

Yesterday, I was thinking about being ready for opportunity, which subsequently got me thinking about what happens when an opportunity disappears – when you lose a job, when a relationship ends, or when what was supposed to be your big break ends up barely qualifying as a small crack.

Our tendency is to flip out a bit. To get angry. Or sad. Or both.

And our tendency is to assume that we’ll never get an opportunity like that again.

But if we’re really being rational about it, that doesn’t make any sense.

Whatever opportunity we are a lamenting the loss of probably came our way unexpectedly. We didn’t board the airplane expecting to find love or sit down at the coffee shop expecting to find a job. But we did.

The supply of unexpected opportunities is actually infinite. No, they won’t be the same. They will lead your life in different directions. They will teach you something different. But they will be there. 

And the interesting thing about unexpected opportunities is that the more you open your heart and mind to them, the more they show up.

Some of the things that have happened to me over the past few months have seemed a little magical to some people. But the only magic, perhaps, is in my shift in mindset. While I do seek opportunities and work hard to make things happen, I don’t pursue things with desperate aggression or with a unilateral vision on one and only path. Instead, I make sure that I’m open to whatever people and opportunities show up.

Approaching the world that way has helped me appreciate and enjoy what I have in the moment, understand the lessons from it when it goes, and be ready for the next thing when it comes. 

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Regret Me Not Project Day 130: Ready for Opportunity

Posted on May 5, 2011 by jessicahlawrence

This post was inspired by the words of Derek K. Miller in his Last post.

We spend a lot of time waiting for opportunities.

And trying to create them too.

But when an opportunity we weren’t expecting comes up and knocks on our door, we get flustered. It’s a surprise. We weren’t ready for it. It might take us off the path we envisioned for ourselves. We want to close the door and go about our business, pretending that we didn’t see it. We do this with work. We do this with love. We convince ourselves that it’s not that we’re scared, it’s that we’re being responsible and reasonable.

Forget that.

Open the door.

Be unreasonable.

Revel in the surprise.

Stop thinking so much.

Let the opportunity in.

Let it knock you off course.

Will it change your life? Absolutely.

Will it potentially cause you pain? You bet.

But I’m not sure there is any other way to live.

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