Staying Continuously Connected and Sane At The Same Time

I am very excited about the emerging social media tools and communities that are arising, but I also see the real damage that people are doing to themselves in trying to follow, comment, and be completely and always connected.

But who am I to talk? I’m the guy who responses to most email within minutes. But I’m working on that. I need long periods without interruption to do my best work. I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

Frankly, there’s no such thing as multi-tasking. What’s really happening is a rapid shifting of focus. A human can only keep that up for a short period of time before errors start creeping in. And rarely do we see the best work out of people who are continually interrupted.

Here at the end of they year when you’re planning your New Year’s resolutions, think a bit about how much you’re immersed in the media stream and plan how you’ll protect your sanity and productivity.

Here are a few tips that work for me:

1. Schedule times you’ll check and respond to email. If it’s not that time, don’t check it.
2. Plan your tweeting and Facebook updates to specific times as well.
3. When you take a break from work, take a break from media, too. Get up, walk about – don’t simply turn from that spreadsheet to dive right into the twitter stream.

I’ve recently started using AwayFind and I think it’s an interesting approach (thanks to Patrick Rhone for recommending it to me and sending me an invitation!). It’s a very simple technology solution, but requires that you exercise the discipline of NOT continually checking for email. Essentially, it lets you set up a response to incoming email that lets people know that you will get to their email, but perhaps not right this moment AND it gives them a way to contact you immediately if they feel it’s really important. That’s a nice distinction – letting the sender decide how important it is. And for most messages and most senders, they’ll be satisfied with “pretty soon”, not “right this instant.”

But the responsibility is yours. AwayFind doesn’t quarantine your email. You still have to exercise the discipline to NOT look at it. That’s the tough part. But I think you can do it. I’m getting better at it myself. Just set times to review email and time to do other things. Promise yourself long intervals where you won’t interrupt yourself.

And here’s the big tip: quit out of your email program, quit your browser. Focus on the task at hand. Quit peeking to see if you have new email, new tweets. They’ll still be there when you check back in a little while. If it’s pressing, they’ll find another way to get hold of you. In the mean time, enjoy your time to focus and be productive.