The promise of technology is that it will allow you to better manage your life. It will save you time by making things easier and more convenient. It will give you control. It will make you happy.

Communicate with a click of a button!

Tag everything!

Listen to your music when and where you want!

Watch TV on your own schedule!

You want these things because they are good!

I buy into a lot of this. I believe it and, to a certain degree, I live it. But even with all this empowerment, it's possible to let the technology control you. Case in point: email.

First of all, I should say that, if you want me to read something, it's better to send it to me via email. Postal mail has sometimes been known to sit unopened in my living room for a good week or two before it is finally cracked open. But because I do all of my work on a computer, email is, more often than not, opened minutes after it's arrival.

I've begun to realize that I need to change my habits in this regard. Lately, email has become the Great Interrupter. It's not a hard and fast rule or anything, but generally for me productivity = happiness. And, unless I'm collaborating closely with somebody on a project, email usually only serves to interrupt and distract me from what it is I'm doing, making me less productive. If I were to apply a formula, it would probably be, email ≠ productivity. Therefore, it seems that I can safely conclude that if productivity = happiness and (most of the time) email ≠ productivity, then (most of the time) email ≠ happiness. It's taken me a long time to accept this principle because, despite the logic of the equation, I LOVE email. This is interesting because it shows, quite correctly, that loving something, and being happy because of it, are not necessarily the same thing. But it begs the question, why do I love this thing that, more often than not, does not make me happy? Maybe because I'm a masochist? Maybe I want to be angry, or distracted, or both. Maybe it's because I secretly crave chaos.

In any event, I'm going to try a new approach. For most of the day, I'm going to turn off my email. It's going to be a challenge. It might even hurt a little bit. But if I'm really a masochist, then that should be good, shouldn't it?

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