I am thinking about discipline, and my thoughts haven't taken shape enough to really respond. I like what you said about changing systems, and working around self-discipline, finding cheats for it. I've been thinking a lot about structure. As you know, I left a really structured work environment, a law firm, in 2004, and for the past four years I've been doing work (coaching and freelance writing) that doesn't come with any set structure. As a creative person working in law my views on structure were pretty flat: it's constricting and limiting, who needs it? These last four years have really changed my view. Structure supports you, and reinforces your focus. At least it does for me. It was my job as a coach to create the structure for a whole team of students: to set goals, to make timetables, to figure out the right mix of variety and repetition to make a week of practice productive and fun. But nobody made that structure for me, so I never knew when I should be resting and when I should be working, or even what benchmarks I could use to tell myself how I was doing. Without those things I was constantly uneasy. (And the benchmarks I invented for myself were perfectionist benchmarks, that I could never, ever, live up to.) At every moment, I was thinking about what I should be doing and whether this was the best use of my time. That is tiring.
(Barry Schwartz talks about this phenomenon -- about how unlimited choice leads to anxiety and self-doubt. This 20 minute talk from a few years ago just popped up when I was shuffling my iTunes, and it reminded me again how much I admire him.)
So I think for me that's part of the trick of being happy and productive. Putting myself in a situation where I don't have to invent everything -- the structure and the plan and the objectives. I can do it, but it's taxing. I do better when I'm part of a team of people who share that responsibility, when I don't have to decide each day what will happen that day, but rather can just show up and get to work on my part. I wouldn't like to abdicate entirely my input on the goals and objectives. (That's one of the problematic things about being a young lawyer -- with few exceptions, you don't get to pick your clients or the matters you work on, and I didn't like that aspect.) But being entirely free-form, where what you do, when, and how, are entirely yours to decide each day, can be hard, at least if it's coupled with high expectations about what the results will be.
My new job is exciting to me for what feels like silly reasons.
I know I like the work -- advising college
students is so interesting and rewarding, and I get to learn tons of
new things. But I'm excited about other things: I have a designated
place to go to do the work, an office. There's a time that I am
expected to start working, and, get this, a time that I'm expected to
stop working. You heard me -- stop for the day! Doesn't that sound
cool? (Coaches don't really ever stop; you're a coach in the grocery
store just as much as at practice, and if you're not thinking about
your team and tomorrow's practice, well, you know your rival coaches
are.) There are other people who work near me who also are doing
similar work to mine, who are thinking about how to do it better and
willing to compare notes with me about what they've learned. There is
a schedule and appointments and meetings and limitations on the free
time to work on projects, so I don't have to decide for myself when to
work on which things. It's a lot more clear. I may find some of it
abrasive, but mostly it seems so freeing. The mental energy I used to
use for worrying about when I should be doing what, and how I would
measure my progress, and when I should stop and switch to something
else, can now be directed to more substantive work.
Anyway, you asked me how I intend to become a better email person. One
of the tricks of work I've learned in this free-form phase is how rules
can substitute for self-discipline. I use the timer on my watch to
limit things that could eat up loads of time, and it beeps when fifteen
or twenty minutes are up and I stand up, put the book down or log out,
and go do something else. Otherwise I know I could get totally
absorbed and lose two or three hours. I make rules and then try to
follow them. The email rules I'm considering are limiting when I check
it -- checking it three times a day, maybe, and giving it my full
attention each time I check it. That system might work better than the
constant checking I do now, a dozen or more times a day, whether I'm
able to pay attention and respond or not.