Escape From Mass-Media

Email is the hardest informal news source to weed through. Memos, company announcements, gossip, and chain letters.

The best thing I have ever done for my peace of mind is this: In Outlook, under the Tools menu, select “Options”. Then click on the button for “Email options” then on the button “Advanced Email Options”. In the section entitled “When new items arrive in my inbox” UNCHECK EVERY SINGLE BOX. This means my PC will no longer beep or blink when a new email is received. A dozen new messages can pile up before I have a moment to check them. I’ve never fallen behind in my work. Productivity is enhanced because my stress levels have decreased as my time management abilities have skyrocketed.

As far as personal email is concerned, I have a few preferences.

First, I never buy in to those “send this warning to everyone you know” notes. Even if I’ve had the time to look it up on Snopes and it really is true. If it isn’t true, I reply to the sender with a link to the article debunking it. I like to request that they fact-check these things before sending them out. Repeat offenders usually get a warning that in the future, such discrediting emails will be sent via “Reply All” and would they please remove me from their distribution list.

I usually read the “feel-good” ones and the jokes, but very seldom pass them along. There are two kinds of senders from whom you receive emails from. There are friends who always have an interesting personal note, an invitation to a party, or a fascinating detail that made them think of you. Then there are the people who only send messages to large groups of people at a time, usually with the telltale acronym FW still in the subject line. I prefer to not have my email address be synonymous with SPAM in my friends’ minds.

At the office, we give our energy and attention to our work. If it’s something that challenges, interests or excites you, it’s likely that your energy is recycled right back into your mind – you remain enthusiastic and engaged in your work. If it’s something that is not quite as fascinating, you are likely to feel your energy draining out of you as you give it your attention.

If you are feeding your mind to your work, doesn’t that make it doubly important to love what you do?

After a hard day of paying attention for pay at the office, the one place where we have the most control over what we choose to attend is at home. Do you open all of the mail you receive? Pay bills? Watch television? Listen to the radio? Go online? Flip through a magazine? Is there something on playing just for “background noise” around you?

If you turn all of these things off, what would you hear? Birds singing? Maybe the squeals of neighborhood kids playing tag? Or a dog barking to be let inside? Perhaps it’s the sounds of traffic – cars, trains or airplanes. Can you hear your neighbor’s TV turned up too loudly?

Or is it quiet? Can you hear your breath? What about your heartbeat?

The real question is this – can you leave it all turned off? For one night? Like people who can’t have ice cream in the refrigerator without hurrying to eat it, some people simply can’t have access to all of the media available in daily life and not give it their attention.

I defragged my PC because it’s what I wanted to do with my head.