Death by a thousand emails and meetings
A recent Wall Street Journal article cited data from Microsoft showing that many of us spend the equivalent of two work days each week in meetings and on email.
Barf.
But what if the things we claim to hate (double booked meetings! bottomless inboxes!) are the crutches we are inadvertently leaning on??
Double barf.
Seth Godin’s recent blog post about Chores (those things that are necessary but maybe not important) makes a sassy point that sometimes our “chores” (like those pesky meetings and endless emails) keep us from doing our REAL work, which can be difficult, challenging, or undefined. It’s not a far leap to consider that we might actually lean on or use these distractions as a means to escape the work that’s harder to pin down.
Procrastination used to be more identifiable – sauntering up and down the hall saying hello to everyone including people you don’t know, fiddling with a yo-yo at your desk, or “cleaning” your office. But procrastination cleaned itself up, put on a nice suit, and goes by the names very important meeting and urgent client email.
Using these distractions (or really, letting them use us) chips away at us, bit by bit. When we’re not doing our REAL work, our BEST work, we know it somewhere deep inside and it eats away at our confidence, motivation, and sense of purpose.
So today, what if you tried an experiment? Find an hour’s worth of meetings where you know will not be doing your best work or identify the 10 emails you know are just digital shiny objects – and toss them. Excuse yourself from those meetings, delete those emails. Lock yourself away for that one hour, and see what you can really do when you set yourself free to do your actual best work…
We’ve all looked at a calendar just like this at some point or another, and felt our soul die just a little bit…
