The Desert of Arizona
Foggy 52 Degrees
We’ve been waking up around here pretty early lately. Usually between 5 and 5:30. It’s gonna get earlier as we approach the summer.
Yesterday, by 9:30, I believe, I was pretty much done with the work I had to accomplish. How did I get done so quickly?
Because I clipped the umbilical cord that was limiting my productivity. I didn’t check my email until I was done with the work. So simple and so hard all at once!
It was a bizarre feeling.
I even found myself opening my email program without even thinking throughout the morning. It was just automatic. I’d “blank out” for a moment and obviously fire up the program without even thinking. At that point, I’d come to my senses and close it.
I go through periods where I pull this email issue under control and then let it spin out of control again. But really, it’s a terrible thing to do to yourself.
So I stopped.
I set things up so I don’t have to check it until later in the day.
Will my response time be slower? Yep.
Will some people wonder if I died? Maybe.
Will I need to sit there and just deal with the feeling that it could be like Christmas morning over and over again if I just kept pressing the “Check Mail” button?
Of course. That’s the way to deal with it. You don’t resist it, you don’t fight it. You just exist in the midst of it and watch it.
You can do this with all of your feelings, by the way. Do this with the feeling you get when your client doesn’t like your work. You’re not getting that feeling because you suck, you’re getting that feeling because it’s time for you to grow.
But really, the feeling yesterday was so drastically improved, it’s a wonder why we do these things to ourselves.
Now I’m not exactly the poster child for iron fist willpower or anything. So in order to break this (bad) habit, I simply have to take it off the table as a possibility.
So I arranged things so that’s the case.
Everything’s clearer now. 🙂
What do you think will happen if YOU start clearing out the obstacles interferring with you and your best work?
You’ll probably be surprised.
Actually, the biggest “problem” will be what to do with all of that extra time you didn’t realize you had just laying around.
It’s only 6:40 AM here and I can already see I’m going to have to deal with that “problem” today…