One of my most inhibiting habits is my tendency, however irrational, to believe that opening important emails will cause them to spew vitriol into my eyes, thus blinding me to any possible positive comments the email might contain.
Yes. Think on that. With the original meaning of vitriol, if you please.
There was a point in my life when I was nearly phobic about the prospect of calling people for whatever purpose, important or not. I shook. I had palpitations. I’d do anything to avoid picking up the phone. Never mind that I was constantly assured, by myself and others, that nothing bad could happen to me over the phone. I’m not sure what I was afraid of, in retrospect. That the person on the other end might be mean to me? That they might tell me I’d called the wrong number and–gasp!–would have to redirect me? Or–most intimidating of all–that they might answer no to my questions?
For the most part, I have learned how to cope with my anxiety when calling people. I am quite able to ring up perfect strangers and ask them for all sorts of things. One of my tactics is to deliberately use a “phone manner”. It’s a slightly different voice tone, a very professional mindset (with a lot of honourifics and “thank you kindly”s thrown in), and it is in a sense my shield against whatever perceived threats my hindbrain insists exist inside the telephone wire. Another tactic is to act quickly. I prepare by writing down possible responses I will have to make and questions that I will have to ask, and then I spur my courage to the sticking point and dial before I can back down.
With email, however, neither of these tactics works. The same fears are present: what if the emailer is asking too much of me? Disagreeing with me? Patting me on the head and asking whatever made me think I had the ability to launch myself into such an ambitious project? Furthermore, the lure of procrastination is stronger. No one knows when someone reads her email, so if one doesn’t get a response quickly, one can easily dismiss it as a simple matter of timing. (Nevermind the fact that I can’t live with an unrefreshed inbox.) I can’t shield myself using my not-me manner, and bracing myself becomes less about the “rip it off” school of bandaid removal and more about the “perhaps if I leave it alone the bandaid will eventually meld with my skin and I won’t have to remove it at all” school.
Now, I have gmail, and one of its many endearing features is that it offers a snippet of the email text right there in my inbox! You’d think that seeing the snippet, “Sounds good, I only have one question,” should not lead to me assuming that the one question in question is “Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind?” And yet I am constantly making such assumptions! Procrastination is the only viable technique under such circumstances.
As you may imagine, I am writing this post while my inbox mocks me with not one, but two, important emails regarding a project that I myself conceived and pitched, on my own initiative, to quite positive response. The people the emails are from have been quite supportive, and I can only imagine that they’ll continue to be supportive, but, well…before I opened their emails, I thought I’d just pause to write this post.
…
Hey, wouldn’t you know it? They’re positive!
What bad professional habits do you have that make no sense but that inevitably trap you in their insidious grip?