Hello worklifers,

Today, I wanted to talk about manuals. Unlike, manuals we have with people in our lives, can you humor me and agree for a moment that we can have full blown manuals with the tools in our lives? As worklifers we are immersed in the use of devices and applications we use on a day to day basis. So it goes without saying we have thoughts about them just like we have thoughts about people. The pandemic no doubt pushed us to having deeper relationships with our communication tools.

Have you realized we all have manuals (instruction guides) we have created for us and how we ought to work with these tools? Now these manuals are sometimes created by us in order for us to feel good and happy about ourselves when we use these tools. However, some of these manuals can be quite toxic and controlling & I wanted to share how to reveal these manuals and move to a more thriving relationship.

This has been  topic of great curiosity to me. I have spent a lot of time understanding and shredding my manuals. I also discovered like me, many others share similar manuals. The problem is that they consume headspace. And the other problem is that they tend to be the real source of anxiety and overwhelm instead of the application themselves.

Here is how you can go about revealing these manuals,

  1. Understanding your limited beliefs about tools – It only took me eight years to develop a healthy relationship with email (this is my choice for the example but you can pick your choice of application for this exercise). This is after having been a product manager on email (Outlook) for several years. For a moment, just imagine email (or your favorite mail client) to be a person. For me my forever love will always be Outlook. We are in a great place now thriving with each other. But that wasn’t always the case. Outlook by itself is just a productivity tool/application built for worklifers and achievers with a fantastic set of features. The unread message count as an example is a feature. It manifests itself as merely a fact in our lives. You get up every day and there is an unread count in your Inbox. This is no different than count of onions left in your basket or count of tissue paper left until it needs the next refill. By themselves these counts shouldn’t cause us any anxiety. There is no emotion tied to it until our minds decide to associate something with them. That email count doesn’t mean anything until you make it mean something about you or your ability.

This was insight number #1 – By itself people or tools don’t cause stress and anxiety. It is our thoughts about them that are a source of that stress and anxiety. Really reflect on this deeply.

  • As a productivity ninja and geek, I felt like I had managed to hack email enough over the years, tweak and tune it to get super productive (no doubt I have learnt many hacks but that is not as interesting. There are countless courses and youtube videos for learning those). However, somehow that feeling when I entered the tool or left the tool wasn’t one of joy (there was always this feeling of some anxiety or stress lurking around). When I learnt to feel my anxiety and overwhelm, instead of avoiding or resisting it was deeply instructive and brought me to my next insight.

Insight #2 – We try to think we are doing it wrong or the tool is not there where it needs to be. We tell ourselves, I am not using the tool as effectively as I could. I am not triaging smartly or the tool lacks these features, I really need. We focus on the how vs. focusing on what our limiting beliefs about ourselves and what we make that mean about us. This exercise is not something any productivity course teaches us to do. We are pushed to using more features or doing things differently instead of observing our limiting beliefs.

  • My limiting thoughts looked like these. Not feeling like I am on top of my unread count and making it mean I was behind work. Another simple but harmful limiting thought was that I would miss out on an important communications or opportunity if I didn’t go through my Inbox. Another limiting one was by not responding in time, means I have not an effective manager or employee. This is the slippery path. When you start to associate taking certain actions with your ability to be someone.
  • In the past I had run several experiments during peak months where I had gone a week or two without checking any email. I had evidence not much has changed. The people who wanted to reach me did and there was no evidence that demonstrated one way or the other that I had missed anything critical or important or that I was not effective. It is so subtle for these limiting beliefs to fly under the awareness radar. Our wonderful brains seek out evidence for us and tell us to give into our urges when these limiting beliefs show up. We resort to overusing these tools because they make us feel better in the short term. But in reality we haven’t really shifted our mindset. And you know you really haven’t shifted that mindset with a simple test. Check-in with yourself when you come back from vacation. If that unread count is high do your limited beliefs show up again? Deeply think about it? If you notice a pattern and if the answer is yes it’s time to examine those limited beliefs and bubble them up over your radar & start hanging out with them like I have posted earlier on how to identify limited beliefs.
  1. Revealing your toxic manuals about the tools- Every tool comes with a manual of how to use it. We read them when we setup the tool and then, stash/file them away. Manuals are here to stay as far as people and applications are here to stay. However, have you considered about a manual you have invented with your mind that didn’t come with the tool? Understanding your manual can be quite instructive as it can reveal where that stress, anxiety, and overwhelm, could be seeping from. One common manual instruction, I have seen is the notion of zero inbox. It means for a lot of people that they are productive when they reach a zero inbox. Now this may not even be your own manual and you may end up believing because it is a common manual floating around. So watch out for the manuals you have borrowed from others. Another common manual instruction is how to behave when you come back from vacation? You tell yourself, I must catch up on every single email and this means my first day or week back from vacation should be spent responding to people. Is this an outcome that is valuable to you? Ask yourself? Do you want this instruction? Another manual instruction is that for certain people I have to respond immediately. Funny enough, in most circumstances there are no such rules imposed by those important people to us. They are perfectly ok, for you to respond on your time and trust your judgement. Notice these are manuals you have created for yourself or borrowed from others. Now ask yourself a simple very question “are these serving you to create the results you want in your work and life”? Or “what do you make them mean about you when you don’t follow them”?” How deeply have you attached them to your identity or beliefs. I have figured what is even more toxic is when we end up judging other people because they don’t follow our manuals or break them. We haven’t created healthy boundaries for ourselves and it is so easy to blame others or ourselves when they break our manuals. Once, I revealed my manuals, I wasn’t sure if they were serving my future me and my beliefs. I didn’t see them enriching my life in any way or even giving me the results I wanted. By attaching these manuals to my beliefs they had turned toxic. I could see my relationship being hampered with myself. So I simply decided to shred them away & move to cultivate my empowering beliefs and see what feelings those were generating. I know my empowering beliefs lead to more empowering actions.
  2. Cultivating empowering beliefs and feelings to build thriving relationships – Before changing your actions you must understand what keeps you stuck. However, once you deeply understand that, then it’s time to think about cultivating an intentional mindset. Your empowering thoughts create intentional feelings that can drive sticker actions. The good news is that you can put them into practice. My intentional thoughts when I enter doing email now are as follows.
  • Email is a great means to communicate with a small set of important people in my work and life. I don’t make it mean much about me even if I am unable to communicate with them on a daily basis. But these important people really drive my triage system. If I didn’t have time to respond to any email during the week, then these people get preference over others. I curate and build this list every six months.
  • I use email with the goal to communicate inspiring ideas and help my team and colleagues get unstuck.
  • I like email for closed loop outcomes instead of open ended ones. I start things and answer things with intention to make and close on decisions. This makes it valuable for me. If I can’t create a closed loop outcome, then I switch out. I don’t’ spend much time indulging in what went wrong. Instead I take accountability and drive to close it via a different method.
  • I have created healthy boundaries from a place of love for myself. I love communicating and helping my team and colleagues getting them unstuck. But I need to do so at a scheduled time. This cannot be filler activity. It is intentional. In doing so, I honor my wellbeing and those of others.

In burnout our tendency to buffer and feel numb tends to increase. This increases our usage of email or with communications apps. We tend to easily give into our urges for overworking because it feels good in the short term. However, no person in this world has achieved success simply consuming or using these tools. By building the skills of identifying limiting beliefs and revealing and cultivating an mindset with planning, you can turn this activity into one of purpose and joy. And even when you feel anxiety and overwhelm which is guaranteed, by allowing and processing it in the moment, see if it can reveal a hidden limiting belief or a toxic manual instruction. That is so much more valuable vs. knocking off a few emails.

Cheers,

Maithili Vijay Dandige