The psychological pressure of leaving things undone
I had 31 emails in my inbox yesterday that were still marked as unread when I got done reading my email — not because I hadn’t read them, but because I’d read them and decided that I needed to do something with them.
In other words, I was leaving the emails marked unread as a reminder.
As the day went on, I noticed that every time I opened my email, I got this sinking feeling of having too much to do. There sat a bunch of emails that I needed to deal with in addition to all the things on my calendar.
I got stressed out, and started thinking about all the things I needed to do.
That, for me, is a small example of the psychological pressure of leaving things undone.
When we leave things undone that we feel we should be doing, we waste energy and time. We just plain don’t feel good about ourselves, so leaving things undone comes at a high cost.
I’ve had enough of this. I’d rather really be able to enjoy my time without stress or worry, so creating a new habit of just getting things done is something I’ll be doing.
As far as the emails go, I’ll just take care of at least one more per day than I receive. Eventually they’ll all be gone, and then it’ll just be a matter of daily maintenance.
