Good Work

When was the last time someone bragged to you about all the hard, important work they did staring at the wall. About all the ideas and insights they had by stopping what they were doing, dropping everything, shutting the fuck up for just a minute, and doing some quality thinking about the projects and plans that are important and laid out before them?

I sincerely hope that time is not in recent memory, because that would sure as hell put me in a tight spot with what I thought was a rather brilliant example.

In many ways, Belligerent Mars is a confessional for all the work sins I commit, all the shameful, head-shaking, tut-tutting, face-palming actions I see others do and tell myself I’ll never do – and then proceed to do anyway.

Mea culpa. Might as well get that out of the way.

One of the major sins that I find myself committing (and mind you this is business related - I could extend to my personal life but I’m quite sure there’s not enough ink on the Internet to cover all those), along with nearly everyone around me, is the email brag. Okay, sure, it starts more as an email complaint – “Ugh, I’ve got all this email I need to get through.” But what it really is, in the coded language that the all too many who trade on business credibility understand, is a badge of importance, a sign of how needed you are, how busy you are, how in demand you are, and therefore how important your work is.

Maybe that’s true – as you travel up the food chain you’re typically forced to handle a higher volume of email. But there’s an issue in chasing high-volume as a sign that you’re doing important work. Okay, in all honesty there are several,but I’ll do my best to take it easy on you.

It’s a bit like looking at a top performing runner and equating their success to the fancy Nike’s and flashy spandex that they wear during a race. The outfit is a product of performing at the highest level, not a cause. If you think that walking into Fitness ‘R’ Us and getting yourself a pair of expensive sneakers and for fitting workout attire will suddenly make you a world class athlete, you’re going to find out just how wrong that thought was about a half mile into your first marathon.

But of course you wouldn’t think that, because you are a smart, rational, human being capable of independent thought.

Somehow though, the realization that the exact same consideration about being good at email doesn’t in any way translate for a good majority of people in the knowledge worker field. You can’t reply, forward, and cc yourself into importance. And more importantly, you shouldn’t. Every email you reply to, write, or otherwise engage with (other than throwing it into an archive to be searched upon should the need arise) is an obligation you either place onto yourself or someone else; and in the latter case you’re usually generating some amount of additional work in order to verify the action you you delegated actually got completed as desired. Do you really have the ability to take on obligation after obligation and do an excellent job at it?

If you’re nodding along and chortling to yourself and thinking, “of course I can, I’m great at email”, well for one you might as well close the page now and get back to your inbox,and more importantly you should recall that most men think this about their, uh, performances too. That is, until they start asking around for a second opinion.

In fact, the best email users, the ones that really, truly, honestly could brag about being “great at email” (which of course, they don’t, because you know – they’re great) are the ones that respond to very little of what they receive. You get great at email as you get great at all other areas of your work, not by piling more and more work upon yourself, but by recognizing what actions and potential obligations are worth your time and attention. That starts with realizing that email is a tool to be used, not a job to be done.

The best knowledge workers in their field recognize that every minute they spend “doing email” is a minute they cannot be doing their real job: thinking.

Because real knowledge work is a process of collecting information, organizing that data into logical collections, reviewing the aggregate as aggregate whole, and then artfully synthesizing a result before communicating it effectively. Realize that nowhere is “doing email” listed; it may be a part of that process, it may even be a heavy component of many of those processes, but in no way is it work itself. It is no more than a means of getting the real work done.

What I’m advocating is a small amount of email mindfulness. A recognition that,yes, there are (perhaps unreasonable) expectations than every email sent necessitates a reply; but there must also be a recognition that there are more important things to do during the day than sit in email and respond.

It’s not hard to be great at replying to and sending out a high volume of email. After all, well over ninety percent of email is spam – it’s clearly we’ve long since cracked the secret to sending massive amounts of email without consideration and insight behind each message. What is difficult is saying “no” to the keep-busy attitude that email alcolytes and inbox culture has generated. What’s even more difficult, and even more important, is protecting the time that could be spent reading and answering mail for more quality work pursuits.

Even if – no, especially if – that work is staring at a wall, mind engulfed in important thoughts.