I’d been thinking/talking/writing about doing it for a while now. I’d start, only to relapse. But then something nudged me the right way a few weeks ago…I’ve finally kicked this habit and boy does it feel good!

“It” was email addiction. Having my email program open, essentially 24/7. Clicking to get email between scheduled retrievals (which were set to 10 minutes!) Shifing focus constantly away from real projects to get the latest email, interrupting my work flow to sort junk mail, read and file, even answer or take action on those emails. No wonder I’d have days when it felt like I got absolutely nothing done! Even while I was clicking to download those new emails, I dreaded reading and acting on them — they felt like a distasteful burden.

Now, I’m proud to declare I’ve cut the cord! I open my email at the beginning of my work day, at the end, and 1-2 times in between. And I really knew I’d succeeded when, over the weekend (ok, that’s the next hurdle — working weekends!), I had to keep my email program open because I was working from some notes in a stored email message — and I resented it! I wanted to close that email program so badly. What a difference!

Here’s what surprised me: I haven’t measured, but it feels like my
email volume went down. Email doesn’t take up as much of my time now; I don’t know if that is because I now send fewer emails, or maybe the Universe just knows I don’t want as much anymore, or perhaps it’s just my perception. I don’t care — I just know I feel more relaxed, focused, and much less harried.

Well, at least until one of my VAs gets on a roll… !

Last 5 posts by Terri Zwierzynski

• Building a Service Business is All About Building Relationships - September 21st, 2008
• The How and Why of Twitter -- It's All About People - September 13th, 2008
• Email Marketing: 5 Keys to Gold Medal-Winning Thank You Pages - September 7th, 2008
• Can You Use Twitter to Build Your List? - September 3rd, 2008
• Twittering, Twhirling and Twellowing...Oh My! - August 16th, 2008

This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Solo Entrepreneur Mindset, Self Employed Work Habits, Computers/Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.