Is email an official addiction? If so, I’m really wondering if I belong in EA. As I go into the New Year, I’m really trying to evaluate my life. And I’m realizing that the quantity of emails in my inbox really does effect me emotionally. And sometimes spiritually. I honestly feel like more than half of my day is spent emailing. And maybe that is normal. But I’m not sure it’s entirely healthy.

More specifically, here is what I struggle with. If I have any down time, doesn’t matter whether I’m at a red light or in the bath room, I find myself checking my phone to see if I have an email. And if I do, my subconscious response is “I better read and respond as quickly as possible.”

That sentence just dislodged an ancient memory. When I was a kid I used to come home for dinner, believe it or not, when my mom rang our dinner bell. Sounds like Leave it to Beaver or Mayberry doesn’t it? I’d come home, but I remember saying, “We have to hurry up and eat. My friends are waiting.” If I said that once I said it a hundred times. So even at five years-old, I think I was already driven. I don’t like to keep people waiting! And on one level, that’s respectful and prudent. We actually have a 24-hour rule at NCC. Staff needs to respond to email in a timely fashion.

The problem is this: I can’t seem to keep up.

I had a defining moment at the Willowcreek Group Life Conference a few months ago. I turned off my phone when I got up to speak. I turned it back on afterwards and I had 69 new messages. I wish that was an anomaly, but it’s not. For some reason, it struck me that day. I was pretty tired from a long fall of traveling and speaking. Basically, I felt like a marathoner around mile 18 who realizes they can’t sustain the pace!

Here’s my question: how many emails can you answer per day before it begins to consume your life? I think that varies. If you’re working on Capitol Hill, it may be several hundred emails. But I think we need to know our threshold.

Two years I set three New Years Resolutions that really helped me maintain my personal boundaries:

1) Use all my vacation days.
2) Don’t be away from home more than 30 nights.
3) Don’t check work-related email on my day off.

Using all my vacation days has become a way of life. No turning back on that one! And I’m actually reducing the number of days away to 25 in 2009. But I still struggle with the email boundaries. I check it first thing in the morning. I check it last thing at night. And I check it all the time in between.

That’s my blog confession. I’m honestly not sure how I manage this. But I know I need to make some changes. I’m thinking about an occasional blog fast. And I’m thinking about reestablishing some blog boundaries around my day off.

Thanks for letting me purge!