Ever since the birth of this blog I’ve been grappling with how best to avoid electronic distractions, since it comes with the territory of managing a creative life.
In a damning scourge of anti-productivity, the same laptop, smartphone, browser window, and email account that we use to take care of productive work tasks also lead to horrible distractions. How many times have you gone on Facebook to check the spelling of someone’s name and ended up poring through old photos? How many Wikipedia rabbit holes have you wandered down when pausing for a quick fact check? And worst of all, how much time have you burned through watching YouTube videos during work time because the algorithm suggested them to you?
Well, I have those problems too.
The Hazards of Checking Email
For years now, I’ve found my worst offenders to be email and my smartphone. Email in particular was REALLY bad for a long time because I relied on it for learning about new work shifts when I worked as a test grader, along with other time-sensitive freelance jobs. This led me to check my email excessively during the day—or worse, keep it open all day, so I was constantly bombarded by new messages that usually weren’t that urgent.
To make matters worse, when I was querying agents and publishers about my novel, pulling up my email created a slot machine effect where I would hope for promising news—and often received bad news in the form of a “No thanks,” or no response at all. This constant buildup, letdown, and occasional rush became a source of MAJOR stress, and it’s one of the reasons I hate querying so damned much.
Though I eventually calmed the worst of my email habits, I still found myself struggling with email, particularly in Japan, where my Day Job schedule and the time difference drove me to check my email in the mornings and often left me reeling from stressful news that hit me at the start of the day.
One thing that’s been disturbingly common is that when I change up my routine with a new work schedule, living situation, or way of handling my work, I have to relearn my routine habits under my new setup. This makes me incredibly vulnerable to distractions and setbacks, which drives me to quick dopamine releases from my phone or email when I feel down or stressed. This is something I’ve become more aware of in recent years, and since I recently moved to a new apartment, I wanted to check in on how I’m handling email-related distractions.
Smartphone Distractions Can Be HUGE Time-Sucks!
While excessive email checking tended to impact my workdays in a negative way, excessive smartphone and social media use tended to have a negative impact on EVERY aspect of my life—again, especially in Japan when I was living on my own. Living alone and dealing with the stressors of living abroad often put me in nervous moods when I needed something to calm myself—and reaching for my smartphone became my go-to solution.
During the Trump years, my worst offender was definitely doomscrolling and reading political news, so much so that I stopped using Google Newsfeed on my phone entirely. (Fun Fact: Not using Google Newsfeed regularly made it MUCH harder for the algorithm to figure out what news I wanted to see, so now when I open Google Newsfeed accidentally, all I see are pop culture articles based on random shit I’ve Googled in the past and have no desire to read, making it easier to close the app.)
Texting was my other main smartphone offender, as I found myself constantly answering text messages from different people between different texting apps (as people living abroad tend to do). Spending so much time texting made me want to text even more, to the point where the quantity and frequency of messages became overwhelming and I was constantly reaching for my phone in the middle of other tasks.
Finally, limiting my social media visits to once per day (usually in the evening) helped a LOT, as did setting time limits (usually ten or fifteen minutes total) that I’d stick to by watching my cell phone clock. My social media use never felt so extreme that I needed to delete my accounts or use one of those apps that lock you out after a certain amount of time, but both can be helpful for a lot of people (check out the articles above if you’re interested!).
So, How’s My Email and Smartphone Use Now?
Short answer: Pretty good, but not ideal.
This month has been incredibly busy work-wise, which means I have more emails to write than usual. This translates to more time spent with my email open in a browser tab, which means I’m receiving more emails while I have that browser tab open. (I almost NEVER open email on my phone anymore, except when I’m traveling or have to very quickly check something.)
I’ve been trying to curb this problem by consolidating all of my email-related activities into one part of the day, usually in the early afternoon. (For whatever reason, I tend to get fewer emails between noon and 5:00pm). That lets me get in, do all the emailing I need to do, then close the tab to work on other things without being distracted by new emails. (Because, let’s face it, any email that comes in after 5:00pm can wait until the next day!)
One especially frequent problem is that I often plan to work on an editing project during the morning when I’m fresh (remember that I’m on a fiction break right now, so I’m using my mornings for other things). Unfortunately, though, this often means opening up my email in the morning to download the file, where I’ll get distracted by a lot of messages and lose my focus.
The ridiculously easy answer to this has been to download the file from my email the day before, so I can pull it up from my hard drive in the morning without bothering with email. And let me tell you, this works AWESOMELY WELL!
On the smartphone end, things have been about the same as before: I still leave text alerts and phone noises off during most of the day, so even though this puts me embarrassingly behind on group texts, it’s well worth the added focus.
Occasionally, though, I’ll get sucked into a rush of texts when I pull up my phone between work tasks, but when this happens I try to deal with the texts as best I can, then put the phone down and go on with what I was doing (or take some actual rest time by laying down away from my phone!)
My social media use has been about the same, and probably less than previously, even without needing to set limits for myself. I still struggle with how best to use social media as a promotional tool for my creative work without getting sucked into using it too much, and this is something I want to devote more time to and make a plan for later (particularly with an app that lets you schedule posts to Twitter or Instagram in advance, without actually using the apps themselves).
Keeping On Track, Now and Beyond
Electronic distractions are very real, and keeping tabs on them is incredibly important for building good habits to avoid those distractions. While I still catch myself falling into old habits and not following the routines I’ve planned, I find that I’m able to catch myself when this happens and make a new plan (for example, downloading files to work on the day before so I don’t have to pull up email in the mornings).
Again, it’s SO incredibly important to catch yourself in these bad habits and try to change them rather than seeing them as unchangeable. Continuing to hone your work routine can yield real results when you find yourself working more productively, which means you get more done and feel better as a result.