I am working hard to fine tune my world after coming back from the wilderness this summer. Now that I'm back I am putting a lot of thought into how I can optimize for efficiency, as well as for my own happiness. As I fire back up the old API Evangelist machine, I'm evaluating every concept in play, a process being used, and tool in production, and evaluate how it benefits me or creates friction in my world.
During the next evolution of API Evangelist, I am looking to maximize operations, while also helping to ensure that I do not burn out again (5 years was a long time). While hiking on the trail I thought A LOT about what is real time, and upon my return, I've been applying this to reverse engineering what is real time in my world, and fine tuning it for maximum efficiency and helping me achieve my objectives.
As I had all the moving parts of real time spread out across my workbench, one thing I noticed was the emotional hooks it likes to employ. When I read a Tweet that I didn't agree with, or read a blog post that needed a rebuttal, or a slack conversation that @mentioned me--I felt like I needed to reply. When in reality, there is no reason to reply to real time events, in real time. This is what it wants, not always something you want.
I wanted to better understand this element of my real time world, so I reassembled everything and set back into motion--this time I put a delay switch on ALL responses to real time events across all my channels. No matter how badly I wanted, I was forbidden to response within 48 hours to anything. It was hard at first, but I quickly began to see some interesting efficiency gains and a better overall psychological well-being.
Facebook, Twitter, Github, and Slack all were turned off and only allowed to be turned on a couple times a day. I could write a response to a blog post, but I wouldn't be allowed to post it for at least two days. I actually built this delay switch into my world, as a sort of scheduling system for my platform, which allows me to publish blog posts, Tweets, Github commits, and other pushes that were often real time, using a master schedule.
After a couple of weeks my world feels more like I have several puppets on strings, and performing from a semi-scripted play. Where before it felt the other way around, that I was a puppet on other people's strings, performing in a play I've never seen a script for.
