5

Exercise 2

Focused Email (or Facebook or Texting . . .)

I learned that going into a task with a high level of focus does wonders for accomplishing things. I don’t think I have ever gotten so much email accomplished and felt so successful before than while doing this assignment.

—Eric

Telling myself to focus on email actually helped make the process less stressful. I had permission to let go of things because it was time for email and email only. Focusing on one thing is less stressful than panicking about fifty.

—Emily

In performing the email observation exercise, Maria got a good look at just how distracted she typically was when using email. In addition to noticing the many voices and images in her head, she saw that she was usually checking other information sources, especially Facebook, at the same time she was on email. “It’s like Facebook is a part of my daily life,” she commented, “which is why I usually open up a Facebook tab when I check my email. Unfortunately, I am usually more invested in Facebook than I am in email. . . . Sometimes I have Facebook opened on both my laptop and my smartphone. In situations like this, I noticed that I am looking for pleasure, instant gratification, and to a large extent, distraction. I find that I waste lots of time browsing Facebook when I should be paying close attention to my email.”

Maria found these realizations quite upsetting. But she went a step beyond just observing and feeling bad about her regular state of distraction: She came up with a way to address it. Maybe, she thought, I can work on being more focused when I’m using email. So she tried an experiment: “In checking email, I made an effort to remain conscious of my breathing and to focus my eyes and mind on the task at hand. I checked only emails that pertained to work, education, and employment. I did not want to allow myself to become distracted by random things like Facebook articles, newsfeeds, or distracting thoughts about my recent break-up.”

Although it was initially hard for her to focus in this way, it was clearly a revelation. “Through this activity I discovered the power of concentration. Concentration is an act that requires active filtering and decision making. It requires being constantly aware of my physical and mental being. To build a strong state of concentration, I checked one email at a time, thoroughly reading the content and replying. I realized that in order to be completely engaged with my emails, I had to slow down.”

Experimenting in this way, she also noticed what might derail her. “Certain messages can trigger emotions that lead to thoughts of the past and future. Additionally, checking email requires one to be plugged in with the digital world. At any moment, one can decide to explore multiple Web sites while chatting, Facebooking, and checking email. This exercise forced me to reflect on ways in which I can challenge myself to live in the present and therefore improve my ability to focus.”

In this chapter, you will have the opportunity to explore what Maria discovered: the possibility of engaging with email in a more focused way. The idea is to take your email practice seriously as a craft, and to care enough about what you are reading and writing that you are, in a sense, like the batter at the plate or the woodworker at the bench.

But before we begin to investigate this mode of online behavior I want to be clear about two things. The first is that focusing the mind is hard. Our minds have a natural tendency to wander. We all have the ability to direct our attention to one thing or another, but keeping it on a particular object of focus generally requires training. This exercise is likely to show you (as the previous exercise may already have done) how much your mind actually does wander. Fortunately, the more you practice at focusing, the better you will become.

Second, unlike the email observation exercise, this exercise is prescriptive. In the earlier exercise, I gave you a structured practice for noticing your online habits and tendencies, but I didn’t tell you what you would find or what changes you should make. Here, however, I am telling you what to do. But I’m not saying that you should necessarily adopt this practice as your normal mode of operation from now on. This exercise is an experiment, and when you’re done with it you can decide whether to adopt it, whether to selectively incorporate certain aspects of it into your normal routine, or whether to let go of the whole thing. Whatever you ultimately decide, I think you’ll find that it has taught you some valuable lessons about your online behavior.

As in the previous exercise, you are welcome to choose a different application as your object of study—Facebook or texting, for example, instead of email. Indeed, if you chose to observe something other than email in the previous chapter, I recommend that you stick with that same application in this chapter.

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Box 5.1: The Focused Email Exercise

What to do

Do email and only email. When you notice the impulse to stray to some other app (or if you discover that you have already strayed elsewhere), come back to your email.

Why do it?

• To practice (and strengthen) your ability to maintain task focus.

• To discover which triggers (internal and external events) typically distract you from your task focus.

• To discover what actions and conditions help you to stay focused.

• To decide whether you will want to adopt this approach to email, and if so, when.

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Overview of the Focused Email Exercise

At heart this exercise is quite simple. You will need to set aside some dedicated time on one or more days to perform the primary practice—using email, and only email. Inevitably, you will notice distractions that tempt you to switch to something else. But in the face of these potential distractors, you will simply return your focus to your email. You may also find yourself acting on the temptation to switch, perhaps without conscious awareness. But when you notice that you’ve strayed, you will simply come back to your email—as many times as necessary.

Here is an entry from Holly’s log, which nicely illustrates the practice of coming back, again and again:

Got comfortable on the couch with my laptop—not slouching, legs supported & not crossed. Clicked the inbox to twenty-eight emails. . . . The radio in the other room was annoying and distracting—I asked my husband’s permission to please turn it down & he did. BACK. Continued reading & processing emails but in less than one minute, our house rabbit jumped up on the couch and I began half-consciously petting the rabbit. BACK. Resumed reading email when I found myself thinking about my daughter’s departure . . . and picturing her being weary while driving from the airport to her home. . . . BACK. Began to focus on a response to one of the emails when I realized I was brushing rabbit hair off the seat cover. BACK. Resumed thinking about what I wanted to convey in my email message when I found myself thinking about a nonevent at work this morning. BACK. Got through almost all of the email satisfactorily but realized that I had to pull myself back from both internal and external triggers about fifteen times in a thirty-five-minute period.

I love this description. It is rich with detail, showing how Holly’s email session was regularly interrupted both by internal distractions (thoughts about her daughter, about work) and external distractions (the radio, the rabbit). I also love the touch of lightheartedness in her account as she exhorts herself to come back, again and again. In light of the challenges this exercise presents, maintaining some curiosity and humor about it isn’t such a bad idea.

This exercise can be useful in at least three ways. First, doing it on a regular basis will strengthen your attention so you’re more able to stay focused when you want or need to. It does get easier with practice. (In Chapter 3 I likened this to doing reps at the gym to strengthen your muscles.) Second, staying more focused on the task at hand is likely to increase your effectiveness (something, of course, you’ll have to verify for yourself). And third, the attempt to stay focused in this way will likely show you what tends to pull you away—the various internal and external triggers that exert the greatest influence on you. You will therefore learn more about what normally distracts you, and this can help you remove, or at least anticipate, some of these distractions in the future.

How to Do the Focused Email Exercise

Box 5.2 summarizes the six steps in the exercise.

Step 1: Perform the primary practice (do email exclusively)

As in the email observation exercise, plan to conduct the focused email exercise for one or more sessions. Each session should last for at least fifteen or twenty minutes. I’ve already explained the essence of the exercise above: Just handle your email to the exclusion of all other online and offline activities. And measure your success not by whether your focus is unwavering (a nearly impossible goal), but by your willingness to keep bringing your attention back.

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Box 5.2: The Steps of the Focused Email Exercise

Step 1: Perform the primary practice (do email exclusively)

Do email, and only email. Come back to your email whenever you wander away.

Step 2: Observe what you are doing and feeling

Notice how well you are able to stay focused. Notice when you stray, or when you’re tempted to stray. What was happening, and what were you feeling, at those moments?

Step 3: Log what you are observing

Keep a running record of what you observe.

Step 4: Consolidate (summarize) your observations

Review your log, looking for larger patterns. What helps you stay focused? What typically tempts you to stray?

Step 5: Formulate personal guidelines

What do these patterns suggest about how to use email in healthier and more effective ways?

Step 6: Share and discuss

Talk with others about what you’ve been discovering.

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Let me also offer you a variant on this exercise. The version I’ve explained thus far might be called the restricted version: All activities outside of your primary practice, email, are forbidden. But there are times when you might actually switch to another task or application while still maintaining your intention not to stray. Many of us, for example, regularly make entries in our calendar or our to-do list while we’re reading email. Doing this is actually part of our email practice, and not doing it can seem awkward and unnatural. If you’re one of these people, you might consider doing a slightly more expansive version of the exercise, in which you allow yourself occasional excursions, so long as they are directly related to the email activity you’re currently doing. The danger is that seeing your calendar or your to-do list will distract you from what you were just doing on email. In other words, it’s possible to use your calendar and to-do list in the spirit of this exercise—but it’s also possible to use them to violate, and thus gut, the exercise. In which case, why do it?

Finally, one of the most basic, and common, forms of attention training consists in bringing one’s attention back, again and again, to a chosen object of focus. I introduced the mindful breathing practice (further explained in Appendix A) as one of the most common forms of such training. While you needn’t perform mindful breathing here (or anywhere in the book, for that matter), some people do find it a helpful preparation for this exercise. Before starting the exercise, take a few mindful breaths, or sit for ten or fifteen minutes paying attention to your breathing, to help settle yourself. You might think of it as a warm-up exercise, like stretching before going for a run.

Step 2: Observe what you are doing and feeling

So what happens when you try to stay focused exclusively on your email? It’s likely that you are tempted to stray (like Maria, who found the pull of Facebook hard to resist). Pay attention to what distracts you, as Holly does in the log entry I quoted above. Some of these triggers will be external in nature: Your phone starts ringing, you hear a beep signaling the arrival of a text message, someone knocks on your door. Other triggers arise from internal conditions: You suddenly remember another item for your to-do list, you begin to feel anxious or restless. Performing the mindful check-in (Appendix A) at such moments may help you clarify what you’re feeling and how it may be motivating you.

Of course, just as it’s hard to stay focused, it can be hard to bring this level of self-observation to bear. You may not be able to notice triggers before you’ve reacted to them, before you’ve shifted your focus to something other than email. Or you may be able to do it only occasionally.

Step 3: Log what you are observing

Keep a written record of your observations, at whatever level of detail you find most helpful. (Holly’s log entry, which I quote from above, is unusually detailed. Don’t feel you need to emulate her.) Here are two more examples:

I am sitting up at my home desk. I have kept my phone on, but faced it down and set it out of my reach. I have an ache in my lower back and my left ankle hurts. I also realize that I had been squinting/furrowing my brow while working on my reflection just moments before. I do this when I concentrate, and it makes my forehead ache. I take a couple of deep breaths and try to consciously loosen the muscles in my face. I start by opening only my personal account. I have no new messages.

—Susan

My first session on email and I didn’t do too well. I found that I was easily distracted and even though I had the idea to stay focused on the task, I quickly drifted to Facebook or other Web sites at the slightest hint of a divergent thought or task remembrance. The impulse felt reflexive. I cut this session short at around six minutes, but really I didn’t follow the guidelines of the exercise at all.

—Martin

Step 4: Consolidate (summarize) your observations

Now read through your log, looking for larger patterns. Were there times when it was easier to stay focused on your email? What conditions helped you to do so—changes to your breathing, to your posture, to your immediate environment? Did you make any changes in the way you used email that you found helpful? When did your mind tend to wander? Which triggers, internal or external, tended to exert the most influence on you? Which ones were easy to surmount and which ones were almost impossible to resist? Did you notice any change in your response to triggers as you conducted more sessions?

Write about the patterns you have been discovering. Box 5.3 provides some questions that may help you focus your reflection.

Step 5: Formulate personal guidelines

Finally, based on what you’ve discovered, formulate personal guidelines that will help you in your future dealings with email. But as you do this, let me remind you of what I said at the beginning of the chapter: While this exercise is prescriptive, my intent isn’t to persuade you to adopt this practice all the time. Rather, it’s to show you that there is a mode of operating online that is more focused (and potentially healthier and more effective) than what many of us do, and that can be learned. Is this practice valuable enough to you to adopt at certain points during the day, and to keep practicing as a way of getting better at it?

If your answer is yes, then when will you decide to practice it? At certain times of the day? When you’re trying to accomplish certain tasks? What conditions, internal and external, will help you do your best? If your answer is no, you don’t see yourself adopting this practice, ever, what have you learned that will be useful to you nonetheless?

Step 6: Share and discuss

How do your reactions to the exercise compare with those of others? It can be fascinating to discover the similarities and differences among your friends and coworkers, and also to sharpen your understanding of your own tendencies in conversation with them. In the next section, I describe some of the patterns I’ve observed in teaching my course.

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Box 5.3: Noticing Patterns in the Focused Email Exercise

1. What did you do?

How many sessions did you practice the focused email exercise? For how long? Did you do the more or less restricted version? How was this mode of doing email similar to or different from your normal mode?

2. Overall, what was your experience of the exercise?

Was it hard to keep your attention focused on your email? To what extent were you successful?

3. What helped you stay focused?

Did certain conditions, whether internal or external, make it easier for you to stay with your email?

4. What internal and external triggers did you notice?

Which were easiest and which were hardest to deal with?

5. Do you intend to adopt this strategy in the future?

Why or why not? Would you consider adopting it at times, and if so, when?

6. Summarize what you learned from the exercise

What did it show you about your current relationship with email, and how might this affect what you do in the future?

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What Others Report

Reactions to the Exercise

Some people actually find the exercise quite easy. They discover that it’s liberating, a breath of fresh air, just to focus on email. Erin, a musician, says: “I appreciated the space that focusing on my email for twenty minutes gave me. I felt relaxed and free—not pressed for time or rushing through anything.” Some say they’ve been given “permission” to do just one thing, and to let go, for the moment, of the multiple things crowding in upon them.

Of course, not everyone finds the exercise easy, or pleasant. It can be uncomfortable to discover that much of the time we can’t actually control our attention, we can’t simply will ourselves to stay on task. It helps to remember that persevering with the exercise leads to improvement.

Discovering the Benefits

Why approach email in this way? Some people see that they’re more effective when they’re able to more fully concentrate on what they’re doing. Jordan, a marketing manager, draws an analogy to splitting firewood: “Each next log demands complete attention and focus, and each swing demands the right level of commitment. I can think of email in a similar way. Each next email is like a new log that needs complete focus and then just the right amount of commitment.” (Notice the craft perspective here.)

Some people find that this is a less stressful and more enjoyable way to do email. Rather than feeling the weight of their whole to-do list, they are able to relax by engaging fully with what is immediately present. “Focusing on one thing is less stressful than panicking about fifty,” says Emily, a research librarian. And Morgan, a school media specialist, comments, “Email doesn’t have to be always bad. In fact, setting aside a good twenty minutes to do email and only email can be a really nice way to feel more calm and in control about those unread inbox messages.”

Noticing and Dealing with Distractions

The central challenge to focusing exclusively on email is recognizing and responding to distractions. In doing the exercise, people often get a good look at their tendency to wander. “I was able to notice when my attention went off the rails,” says Emily, “and was able to bring myself back to my email task. However, my attention jumped around a lot, and I had to gently and kindly bring myself back quite often. I also had to remind myself to be kind and gentle about it, rather than frustrated.”

Beyond just noticing that their minds wandered, people sometimes see where their minds went, and even why. “Every single time I faced an email that I didn’t know immediately what to do or how I would handle it,” Emily says, “I wanted to jump to a distraction, like Facebook, IM, the news, my personal email, chatting with a colleague, making tea, eating chocolate . . . anything, anything else.”

Strategies for Staying Focused

Whether or not they decide to adopt this method on a regular basis, some people do come away with strategies for recovering or deepening their focus. Box 5.4 lists four commonly noted strategies.

1. Establish and monitor your intention

Establishing your intention is crucial in craftwork. It can be quite helpful to decide what you’re setting out to do as you go online, and to periodically check in to see whether you are being true to that intention. Clarity of intention becomes the lodestar by which to steer your course. This is one of the most common discoveries—in all the exercises, not just this one. “I told my wife that I couldn’t be interrupted for the next fifteen minutes,” a management consultant named Trent says, “and I explained why (she was in the same room working, too). This seemed to elevate my focus, i.e., my stated intention actually made me more focused.”

2. Use breath and body awareness to focus and relax

What can we do when we’re feeling distracted? Some people discover that breath and body are powerful resources for restoring focus.

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Box 5.4: Strategies for Staying Focused

1. Establish and monitor your intention

2. Use breath and body awareness to focus and relax

3. Slow down

4. Establish physical and temporal boundaries

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Kathleen, a single mother returning to school, says: “In the afternoons I tend to feel fragmented, tired, and I do have a harder time concentrating. But I have started to do thirty-to-sixty-second [breath] meditations prior to opening my inbox in the afternoons and it is a huge help. Taking that short amount of time to pause the ceaseless racket in my brain before attempting to focus makes all the difference in my productivity and my emotional state.”

3. Slow down

Slowing down can also help us feel more in touch and in control. It’s understandable why we might check email in a rushed and breathless way: we’re trying to get on to the next task, and the next (and the next . . .). But rushing is as much an attitude (I don’t have time for this) as an objective fact (how much faster are we actually going, really)? Slowing down enough to take email seriously (the craft perspective again) can actually help us appreciate it, strange though this may seem. Will puts it this way: “Usually I rush through the email’s contents, just scanning through the words as fast as I can, making quick judgments about its value and whether I should invest time into it. [But] when I’m committed to actually reading each email slowly, I find my experience to be a much calmer one than usual. Strangely enough, emails that I regularly would delete or find irritation with suddenly seemed kind of interesting. They seem to have value.” And he adds, “I can’t believe I just said email can be valuable and appreciated.”

4. Establish physical and temporal boundaries

As people notice what tends to distract them, they realize that some of these conditions are actually under their control. They can eliminate potential sources of interruption, closing windows on the screen or smart phone apps, silencing their phones, clearing their desks of unnecessary clutter, and letting people around them know that they prefer not to be disturbed. Gary, an educational technologist, wrote the following guidelines for establishing such boundaries:

Create a space conducive to focused email:

1. Physical: comfortable desk and chair; little noise; few outside distractions; good natural lighting

2. Mental: dedicate time for the exercise that puts all non-task-related thoughts outside the boundaries of practice

3. Social: alert others that for the next x minutes I will be focused on email and unable to converse.

Final Reflections

While this chapter’s exercise is about email (or Facebook, or texting, if you prefer), the lessons from it potentially extend beyond this application to all aspects of our lives. Learning how to focus better on whatever we’re doing, learning to notice those times when we’re distracted and figuring out what to do about it—these are basic life skills. At the same time that we’re exploring and possibly improving our email practice, we are training our attention. As Nichola comments: “I will certainly continue to explore methods of focus like this. My favorite part is the scalability: any task can be approached with the same careful attention.”