I was just wondering the other day why "responsive culture" didn't used to bother me nearly as much as it does now. In my 20s, I basically turned my early dumbphone into the closest thing I could get to a smart phone before smart phones existed. I would use it to check email and social media on my browser before there were apps for any of it, and I loved being seen as quick and responsive and truly did not feel like it hampered my creativity or ability to think or live my life. That slowly started to change in my late 30s (partly because suddenly EVERYONE was available/responsive all the time and it was all just too much, but also partly, I think, because I was changing, my desired response time was changing, my need for quiet and space to think was increasing.) Now I'm pretty much off social media, Slack drives me batty, shared Google calendars feel like an affront to my humanity and I'm even starting to get tired of email, which I used to love most of all. I hadn't thought of it as an early vs later career thing but that really helps me reframe it - I'd wondered if my brain was just getting tired :)
This post has some great tips that I will put into practice myself AND I’m sharing it with a colleague who needs to get really real about setting boundaries! TY Christine!
This is an awesome post! I love creating boundaries around deep work even though I’m still pretty much in the early stages of stepping back from immediate responses. There are ways to set your slack up to not tell you how many “things” are waiting for you. I’ve turned that off. I’ve turned off windows notifications for everything including email. And I’ve muted a lot of the noisier channels that don’t serve me daily, and I clear them out weekly or biweekly depending on how busy I’ve been.
On point! 👌🏾
I was just wondering the other day why "responsive culture" didn't used to bother me nearly as much as it does now. In my 20s, I basically turned my early dumbphone into the closest thing I could get to a smart phone before smart phones existed. I would use it to check email and social media on my browser before there were apps for any of it, and I loved being seen as quick and responsive and truly did not feel like it hampered my creativity or ability to think or live my life. That slowly started to change in my late 30s (partly because suddenly EVERYONE was available/responsive all the time and it was all just too much, but also partly, I think, because I was changing, my desired response time was changing, my need for quiet and space to think was increasing.) Now I'm pretty much off social media, Slack drives me batty, shared Google calendars feel like an affront to my humanity and I'm even starting to get tired of email, which I used to love most of all. I hadn't thought of it as an early vs later career thing but that really helps me reframe it - I'd wondered if my brain was just getting tired :)
I'd say that your brain isn't getting tired, it's coming into it's most authentic form. :-)
This post has some great tips that I will put into practice myself AND I’m sharing it with a colleague who needs to get really real about setting boundaries! TY Christine!
You're welcome! And yay, boundary setting!
This is an awesome post! I love creating boundaries around deep work even though I’m still pretty much in the early stages of stepping back from immediate responses. There are ways to set your slack up to not tell you how many “things” are waiting for you. I’ve turned that off. I’ve turned off windows notifications for everything including email. And I’ve muted a lot of the noisier channels that don’t serve me daily, and I clear them out weekly or biweekly depending on how busy I’ve been.
That's great -- sounds like you have some excellent systems in place!