I’m not supposed to be looking at work email today. I took it off as a staycation, but curiosity gets the best of me and I just had to keep a pulse on what was going on in my email.
A slew of emails had come through and about 20 of them had the same heading. Yikes. Must be some kind of emergency. In our case (since we deal with training and development) that would be categorized as a “learning emergency.”
But, it wasn’t an emergency. Not a real one. Sometimes we go into a reactive mode when we want a question answered instead of thoughtfully responding. So, we go back and forth creating a flurry of communications that cannot be resolved because the person to resolve it is ….on a staycation.
Reacting and responding are not one in the same. Even so, when these conversations take place in an email setting, we feel compelled to jump in and correct it as much as possible before it goes beyond our control. I couldn’t help myself and I intervened. It was intended to spare them extra work and further conversation, but it didn’t and rarely does. Even though I’m the person to resolve it, I am only half here (see “staycation” comment). It reminds unresolved. A waste of precious time and stirring up feelings of “faux frantic” and dis-trust the next time it occurs. After all, some people make this a habit.
Ah well. My way of stepping away from it was writing this blogpost on a different computer.
…back to the staycation.
