Oprah – Her 30-day e-mail detox
Posted by John Malloy on 02/09/2009
My e-mail was making me sick. No, I’m not paranoid that it was emitting cancer-causing electricity. But whenever I opened my in-box, I noticed a creeping resentment.
I had come to hate e-mail, for all the reasons anyone does. It interrupts and overwhelms. It causes stress. It distracts the brain and encourages the fracturing of attention. Because it’s devoid of verbal tone and facial expression, it leads to miscommunication, confusion, and hurt feelings. All for the sake of making our lives “easier.”
I started thinking about the problem a few months ago, when I was burned out from a year of overwork at the theater company I run. By chance, I found myself with a copy of Carl Honoré’s “In Praise of Slowness”, a brilliant criticism of the culture of speed.
Honoré is a proponent of the Slow movement, which encourages a deceleration of everything from cooking to business management, driving to talking styles– based on the belief that speed can produce disconnection from daily life. And every time I read the word “speed,” I couldn’t help substituting “e-mail.”
Of course, I might never have read his book at all if I hadn’t been kindly put on mandatory vacation by everyone in my life. One of my theater partners said, “Why don’t you take four weeks? You can’t get anything done over the holidays, anyway.”
Though I burst out laughing, I conceded, kind of: I took three days. And after they passed, I took another. And another. I put up an outgoing message on my e-mail saying I’d be away for an entire week. Then total irrationality struck. I couldn’t take vacation for the rest of my life, but I began fantasizing about what would happen if I gave up e-mail for good.
In the end, I decided on a 30-day e-mail detox. No e-mail, in or out, for one month. Anyone can do a month, right? Oprah.com: What would you dare to live without?
A week before I go off e-mail, the reactions from friends and co-workers range from nausea to abject envy and awe. There are those who revel in their “crackberry” addiction and dread the looming disconnection, and those who long to walk on their own without their iron lung. Everyone wants to explain why they could never do what I’m about to.
I create a chirpy bounce-back message that people will receive if they e-mail me, and offer my cell phone number as an olive branch.
At a staff meeting, I announce that I will be unreachable by e-mail for 30 days! I enthusiastically outline the plan and the motivation behind it! I am met with dead silence. The staff are neither enthralled nor inspired. They are wondering how this is going to affect them. Oh, dear. I hadn’t thought of the impact on these lovely, generous, already overextended people. Now everyone hates me. I am The One Whom No One Can Reach.
Two days to go. There are a million ways to cheat at the abstinence game, and I’m flirting with every one of them. Each time, the idea seems reasonable enough (I’ll just look to make sure I’m not missing a great work opportunity! I’ll switch to text messaging!), until I voice the thought aloud and am met with looks of pity mixed with disgust.
I dream that my girlfriends kick me out of their clubhouse.
Going through my final e-mails, I feel a nervous tingling, imagining myself slipping down the slope of out-of-the-loop-ness. I have pictured this process, imagining the quiet solitude of recovery. The time freed up, the interaction on a human plane. But panic takes over as the click of my mouse sends the final Dear John message out across my world.
Day 1
Halfway through the day, my cell phone battery dies from overuse.
By noon, I have four outraged voice mails from my best friend: “If you’re going to do this, leave your cell on! And in your pocket!” I’ve had a cell for only four years. We’ve been friends for 12. How did our friendship survive?
I call my mother. “Thank God you’re somewhere!” she jokes. In fact, the Internet is the most not-somewhere you can be. But I see what she means.
I had pictured having some mongoose-like vigor that would send me into a fury of creativity, but it’s not happening. I made the horrible, horrible mistake of clearing out the day for this. And now I sit here while everyone else in the theater office is reading e-mail. The desire to cheat is ravenous.
Still Day 1
There’s a Bermuda Triangle in my life of to-do items that get lost until a significant space of rediscovered time is created, at which point these items reappear like lost pilots who walk toward their loved ones through a mist, wearing 1940s clothes. The pilots are now reappearing.
I need to contact my whole cast to change tomorrow’s rehearsal time. Six actors times two minutes per call equals 12 minutes. Upside: One actor never checks e-mail, another’s is down; phone calls assure rehearsal change works. Might hang on to this system after my 30 days are up.
I wish I had someone looking at my in-box for me, to make sure nothing disastrous is happening. Although, really, what could be disastrous in an office setting if you’re not, say, a terrorist watch organization? My inflated sense of self-importance is becoming clearer. My Zen teacher would be so proud. Screw her.Oprah.com: The beginner’s guide to meditation
www.cnn.com
Posted by
John Malloy
on 02/09/2009. Filed under
International.
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