Responding to every email, every day, until I can't
July 2024
In my post about shamefully deleting all the deluded, overly ambitious email automations Past Me set up as an elaborate form of procrastination, I mentioned the lore about Noam Chomsky supposedly answering every email he ever received.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a Noam Chomsky fanboy or anything, but the image of him typing all those replies just stuck in my head. He published several books that sold millions of copies, appeared in films, taught at university—he must have gotten tons of messages. Assuming he really did respond to all (or even most) of them, how did he do it? Why did he do it?
“It must take so much time,” I think to myself. And then I think about all the time I once spent trying to “build an audience” on “social media”*. All the time I spent setting up those automations.
And all the time I currently spend hiding from my inbox. Thinking “I ought to catch up on messages … but I don’t have time now, maybe this afternoon.” It occurs to me that a daily practice of reading and responding to every message would be much easier on me, psychologically, than my current practice of avoidance-binge-repeat. And a much better use of my time than lots of other stuff I’ve done and still do.
So today, Thursday, July 11, 2024, I resolve to respond to every message I receive, once a day, every day**, until I’m no longer able to. (Which most likely means forever.)
*At the risk of being tiresome, it’s more accurate to call these sites “ad platforms”
**At least 80% of the time