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The
Technology Tailor Newsletter |
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This Issue: |
March
5, 2007 |
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In
Print: My Addiction to E-Mail
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Resources
from The Technology Tailor Show on WGN
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By
Alex L. Goldfayn
The Technology
Tailor
Admitting e-mail addiction
often first step to
recovery
Published March 5,
2007
Chicago Tribune
A Pennsylvania
woman calling herself a life and business coach
for executives has been making a lot of news
over the past week talking about e-mail
addiction.
Marsha Egan has been touting
her 12-step program for curing e-mail
addiction.
Dubious, I brought this up on
my WGN radio show. A woman called who said she
checks her BlackBerry every time it chirps that
a new message has arrived. Even at 2
a.m.
How many times per day does it
chirp?
Sixty times, she
estimated.
I felt bad for the lady, but
surely she is the exception. Normal people don't
interrupt their day countless times for every
e-mail that comes in. Do they?
And what's
this 12-step program, anyway? What are we
talking about here, alcohol, drugs or electronic
messages?
I phoned Egan. I was prepared
to be tough, but she seemed really
nice.
"Go ahead," I dared her. "Do your
thing with me. Sure, I go through lots of e-mail
every day, but I'm not addicted."
(I have
a degree in psychology, and even as I said this,
I realized I may have been enlisting the big
daddy of defense mechanisms,
denial.)
Like a stubborn 4-year-old, I
repeated, "I don't think I'm
addicted."
Slowly, confidently, Egan
replied, "I'm not a psychiatrist, so I'm not
qualified to determine whether you're addicted.
But I can help you determine if you have some
bad habits that are not serving you
well."
Seemed reasonable, but I dug in. I
greeted her with silence.
"Are you
interested in finding more time to do what's
truly important in your life?" Egan
asked.
What can one say to this? "Sure,"
I responded.
This was the wrong answer,
because right then she began to jujitsu
me.
"So we've established that you might
be open to changing some of your current habits
if you can find more time," she started. "Do you
feel like you are managing your e-mail or that
your e-mail is managing you? Are you reactive or
proactive about your e-mail?"
I look at
it and respond to it almost always when it comes
in.
"We have opportunities here,
Alex."
Oh?
"How many times a day,
when you're working on something, does e-mail
interrupt you when it flashes on your screen?"
she asked me.
Uh oh.
I get about
100 e-mails per day. And I probably look at my
e-mail program every 15 minutes. I told her, and
then I blushed.
"So conservatively, let's
say you work eight-hour days, which means e-mail
interrupts you 32 times per day," Egan
continued.
Clearly, she was on the
offense, and I was the Chicago Bears Super Bowl
defense, retreating helplessly.
"In
common time-management theory, it's widely known
that it takes an average of four minutes to
recover from an interruption and get back to
work," she said.
I laughed nervously. For
me, the length of the interruption kind of
depends on how long the YouTube video I'm
watching is. Or when that interesting eBay
auction ends. Or, don't tell anyone, how good
the Oprah guest is this morning.
"I call
it i-terrupt, because you interrupt yourself,"
she said with a laugh. A comedian!
Then
she went in for the kill. She became Peyton
Manning finishing off a backbreaking 10-minute
drive with an easy touchdown
pass.
"You've just told me that you could
potentially be spending 128 minutes, which is
more than two hours per day, just recovering
from interruption caused by
e-mail.
"That's just interruption
recovery time. It has nothing to do with whether
you've responded to the e-mail or
not."
My life is horrible. I never should
have called this woman.
"OK, OK, I give
up," I nearly cried. "You're right. I'm
addicted. Give me the 12
steps."
Necessary steps
For
help with your own e-mail addiction, here are
Egan's 12 steps:
- Admit that your e-mail
is managing you; that you are "e-ddicted." Let
go of your need to check your e-mail every 10
minutes, Egan said.
- Commit to keeping
your in box empty (I literally have more than
6,000 messages in my in box, dating back to the
middle of last year.)
- Create folders in
your e-mail program to organize your
messages.
- Use broad folder headings.
For example, use a single "benefits" folder
rather than separate ones for dental insurance,
life insurance, etc.
- Adopt a two-minute
rule: If it can be handled and deleted in less
than two minutes, do it and delete the
e-mail.
- Set a target date by which to
completely empty your in box. Make it realistic
and commit to it.
- Turn off automatic
send/receive, thereby turning off interruptions.
(This one makes me twitch.)
- Establish
regular times to review your e-mail.
-
Involve others in conquering your addiction.
"It's not a sign of weakness to do," Egan said.
"It's a sign of strength."
- Reduce the
amount of e-mail you receive. Get a junk filter.
Unsubscribe from unnecessary lists.
-
Keep to one subject per e-mail and use a
detailed subject line in notes you
send.
- Celebrate. You have made it
through the 12-step process.
For more
help with your addiction (Egan does
teleconferences and private coaching), visit Web
site at http://www.eganemailsolutions.com
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The
Bush Administration Wants to Know What You do
Online
Our government is once again
trying to get Internet service providers like
Comcast and AOL to store records of what YOU do
online. A very interesting discussion broke out
on Saturday's show about this: it's hard to
argue against the program if helps law
enforcement catch terrorists and child abusers.
However, the U.S. Justice Department is asking
for back-door access to service providers, which
is, in essence, a free license to hack. Can we
trust them to self-police the scope and
targets?
Fascinating article about this
matter on CNet's News.com here:
http://news.com.com/Justice+Department+takes+aim+at+image-sharing+sites/2100-1028_3-6163679.html
The
Reverend of Weddings and Car
Haggling
One of the most interesting
people I've spoken to in recent memory was
Reverend Phil Landers (his real name). He's a
full-time wedding minister
( http://www.idoweddings.tv
) and a part-time professional auto haggler
(
http://www.nomorehaggling.com
). That's right, the reverend will go to the car
dealership with you and negotiate a deal on a
car!
We discussed his use of Elance, a
fabulous resource that lets you post your
request for a proposal on a wide range of
business projects including Web design, logo
design, legal and accounting services. Then,
service providers bid on your work. You select a
winner, pay them through Elance, and off you go.
It cost the reverend just $850 to get his
IDoWeddings.tv Web site designed.
Check
it out: http://www.elance.com
.
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