Addicted to Email
Dear reader,
I have come to find that I have been completely addicted to checking my email on my phone, answering my email on my phone, and generally being available by email at all times and at all costs.
I found that after quitting social media the Gmail app became the next best thing to give me a hit of dopamine. The great refresh. The great swipe down and wait for the magic moment where ONE SINGLE EMAIL is waiting for my precious reply. I would tend to my inbox in the bath, in my bed, on the couch, in downtime while at a friend’s house. I was answering emails at all times of the day, every day, with no breaks.
All of this changed drastically just in the last few weeks when I switched from an iPhone to an android phone called The Wisephone 2. This phone looks a lot like an iPhone in its physical form and keyboard but the interface is incredibly pleasant to look at rather than the colorful bright square apps in the iPhone. Best of all it doesn’t have : Email, social media, or a web browser. It does have the other main apps I use : Oura Ring, Spotify, Notion, WhatsApp, Audible, and Lyft for when I am traveling.
PIVOTS :
Voice Notes : I do a lot of voice noting with a few friends so we have switched from iMessage to using WhatsApp. Easy peasy. Or I can still make them in my main texts it just send them as audiofiles which is a little clunkier.
Maps : I am a Google Maps girlie myself and have now switched to Waze. The phone has its own organic maps app but I don’t like it. Waze is cute and works great.
Notes : I have over 2k notes in my notes app on iPhone that seamlessly connects with my computer and I am now using Google Keep which I had never heard of before and like even better. It has sort of a Notion meets Notes feel to it and it's so beautiful I love it and feel organized with my notes.
Google Keep in the Zettelkasten / note taking system I use is now my Inbox. My goal is to go through it once a week and either revamp my Notion to keep clearer notes or try out Obsidian for my notes organization. Landscapes is hosting a Digital Organization Show and Tell this upcoming Sunday February 2 at 12pm EST if you care to nerd out.
Hoopla : This is perhaps the one app I am disappointed I can’t access anymore as I am still practicing a version of my six week spending ban and not buying any new books. This means that I can’t listen to audiobooks I borrow through the Hoopla app.
Spotify : Now has audiobooks! I can usually listen to two a month which is a great bonus. I want to start making more playlists for the people and for friends.
Dating Apps : There are no dating apps. This is fine for me because whenever I download a dating app I use it for about fifteen minutes and then it really freaks me out and I delete it. When I am traveling like I am today I sort of wish I could putz around on it. Considering bringing Cody’s Dating Service back, an experiment I did last fall. The google form is closed but feel free to peep the google doc.
News : I have a completely new and emerging relationship with news, breaking news, and the urgency of information. I no longer see breaking news headlines on my phone when I am picking it up to text my dad about his doctor’s appointments. I no longer get breaking news headlines when I am going to put on a podcast or an audiobook. I no longer get breaking news updates when I open my phone to take a picture of my dog. This is freedom. And not only is it freedom, it has actually opened up my capacity to consume news at a pace that keeps me an informed and present citizen. There is nothing urgent I can do to tend to the world at break neck speed. This take may be controversial, but it is working for me. I listen to Democracy Now! most days for my main world news and have a few other newsletters and places I look to to keep me informed in radical and slow ways.
Email on my computer : At first when I made the switch I found that instead of checking my email less during the day I was just more glued to my computer, checking my email there. Searching for something I would never find. The tool that has helped me so much is the app you can install on your computer called Self Control. The biggest gift I give myself is when I am done with work for the day, usually between 2 and 4pm, I turn the app on so that it blocks all work related sites until the following morning. I truly cannot recommend this enough. I have also been practicing SHUTTING DOWN my computer and putting it away in my guest room. I do like to sometimes watch a show in bed on it so I don’t keep this as a hard and fast rule.
My work schedule : Overall this process has revealed my work addiction in new and clear ways. It is never lost on me that I wrote a book called How to Not Always be Working and yet I still have to have these huge overhauls in how I actually work.
I was on zoom 5-7 days a week with creative advising clients, Landscapes, teaching, and other misc calls. This became completely unsustainable for my creative practice which at the end of the day I must protect, or else I have no way of giving anything back to the people.
If I am not learning and growing in my own private, quiet research I won’t have anything to transmute and turn into classes, advising material, or new writing.
I now only have my schedule open for 1:1 sessions Tue - Thu at times that my brain is actually turned on and decided to close my books through the end of February. I am very sensitive to knowing when I am on the edge of burnout and I could feel it coming if I didn’t make a radical shift. I truly think this new phone arrangement revealed this to me.
Common Shapes : I love my podcast, so much, but in the same vein I started to find I couldn’t keep up with coming out with new episodes every week unless I were to bring on more of a team. Which is possible! I can’t wait to share this week’s episode and then the show will take a little break. I know the podcast could come out on a looser schedule, I just feel so glued to the weekly schedule, but this seems to be putting me on the edge of burnout too.
I often hold myself and my business to a standard of someone who has multiple employees and a full team. Or even just someone with a partner to cook them breakfast and take out the trash. I feel myself in a total overhaul of my time, schedule, and energy. Not to drop out and disappear, but to widen my width of availability.
I am currently in Maine visiting one of my favorite dancers and dear friend Tristan Koepke and guest teaching at Bates College to the undergrad Printmaking and Dance majors. It feels like such a gift of my career to be flown somewhere and paid to teach. Calling in more of this in 2025. It also feels calming to my nervous system to know when I leave my computer behind today I won’t be able to check my email.
I am still experiencing a sense of withdrawal and healing around this new phone choice. I absolutely miss being able to compulsively check my email, it's really a hell of a drug. But I notice my attention shifting slowly back to something I remember feeling before I ever had an iPhone. Whenever I get the feeling like I just miss iMessage too much and want to switch back I try to remember more is being revealed to me and the process of regaining attention is a slow one. So many neural pathways to retrain.
I am getting more creative in my business offerings, more strategic, and paced in a way that actually suits my needs. I also notice when I am with friends I almost never take my phone out, when before if a friend would get up to go to the bathroom or something I would always open the Gmail app for a quick check.
Healing the emotional side : When an addictive tendency emerges that fractures my attention I start with the question : What am I avoiding? Or what wound is creating this loop? For me, and this is fresh information that I am still working on, there is this underlying obsession with making sure no one is mad at me. It’s that simple. Call it a symptom of the family disease of alcoholism or general neurodivergence, but I am scanning for threats and want to confirm my safety and acceptance in the world.
The good news is : I am finding ways to trust my current reality as safe, and that if anyone was mad at me (which inevitably will happen personally and professionally) I have the tools to make amends with grace and kindness.
The obsessive scanning doesn’t free me of reality, it takes me out of it. I am grateful to all of these pivots and new ways of interacting with technology. It really is a constant reimagining of how we touch in with the digital realm and how we protect our attention so that we can be of ultimate service to our people and the planet.
May you find your own boundaries with systems of tech addiction that bring you into better alignment with your creative output, relationships, and offerings to the world.
Things of Note :
I am delighted to share that the amazing Dr. Kate Henry has started a new podcast and I am the first guest!
Kate is brilliant at everything she does, including being a productivity coach. I had a few sessions with Kate leading up to the last sprint of writing my book and I truly don’t think I could have done it without her!
If you are looking for a resource on what is going on in the world, continued wildfire relief, links to books and movies and more : look no further than Tamara Santibañez’ newsletter, specifically the issue Scorched Dictionaries
When I am not quite sure where to look for news or resources I look to my friends who are deeply dedicated to dispersing accessible information and I am grateful for the time and effort Tamara puts into their newsletter.
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Cultivate practices for growth and ease. You can have a full hour long intro session with the code “cody” email me via www.transformationcollective.space join us in delving the depths: a communion of writing & plant kin exploring our stories of suicidality. 6 weeks, online, begins 2/12. sign up here Durham, NC songwriter and poet Anne Malin Ringwalt asks "What else is possible?" in bracing and hopeful divorce album, "Strange Power!," out now on Dear Life Records
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