Reverb10. December 2.
Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it? (from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and Focus Manifesto)

One word. Email.

I love email. Having a preschooler with little tolerance for me being on the phone, email is how I stay in touch with friends across the continent and around the world. Those connections, however brief, are meaningful to me.

I hate email. I am buried under mountains of unread messages. My inboxes are the equivalent of an episode of Hoarders. It’s awful. Energetically it’s a load I no longer wish to carry. The incessant green blink of my smart phone taunts me wherever I go. It pulls me away from the present, from what I’m doing, from what I care about. It has to change.

I sit down to check my email before I write and suddenly there is only time to squeeze in a quick post, editing – or sleep – be damned.

I need an email intervention.

I bought Charlie Gilkey’s Email Triage system but haven’t used it yet. I recently got an email from him saying, You bought something from me, have you used it? Use it. Really. He doesn’t know me at all yet somehow, he knows me well. My life is paved with good intentions.

It’s easy to add this to my list of failures. It’s a quick step to beating myself up. I refuse. I breathe. I wonder if I can hire someone to unsubscribe me from all those newsletters I thought were a good idea. I know I need to set aside time to ruthlessly hit delete. Just as I am clearing space in my home, I need to clear space here.

And then I need to write.