My bestie Susie runs a cleaning business.

During the day, she’s fielding calls from existing clients – can she do a deep clean on the rugs? And potential clients – how soon can she start?

During the evening, her staff are busting their 🍑 to sweep and mop. Something accidentally gets broken. Someone’s car won’t start. Someone can’t find the key to the new client’s office.

Getting dinner and drinks with Susie often comes with the symphonic background melody of dings and chirps and buzzes from her phone.

It’s annoying, but I get it. And I’m so grateful I don’t have a job that requires me to be on call 24/7.

Most of us, in reality, are in jobs that don’t involve any actual emergencies.

So, why is your work on your phone?

My therapist gently suggested the most radical idea I’d ever heard: Take your work email off your phone.

First my head spun to outer space at the preposterousness of this notion but when it finally reattached to my head I thought about it… for months.

How many times in my decade plus of running this business have I had a true emergency?

Once my flight to Portland was cancelled and there was no way I was gonna make the next morning’s keynote. I called my client (in tears) to report this news. Email would have been the wrong mode for such an urgent situation.

Several times I’ve sent out my email newsletter, linking to my blog, only to learn that my blog never published as scheduled and the link was going nowhere. When that happens, I get dozens of email replies. That used to feel like an emergency. But it happened so often that now I know I need to double check my blog at a predictable time on predictable days so that no one needs to email me about an issue.

…. that’s all I could think of.

Every other urgent issue, and there really are so few, gets handled by text or call – as it should.

Few of us work in jobs that require us to be hyper-responsive (and if your boss is telling you to be available at all times of the day and night, be sure you’re getting paid accordingly).

So…. why is my work email on my phone?

Why am I checking work email first thing in the morning? So I can see the person complaining about a typo in the first edition of my book? Not how I wanna wake up.

Why am I glancing at my work email in line at the grocery store? What, am I gonna drop my oranges and write back to the person hoping to book me for a workshop? Of course not. All that does is introduce a feeling of urgency, to hurry up through this grocery line and race home, as if that person’s offer is somehow going to expire in the next 10 minutes. The life I’m creating doesn’t involve that false sense of urgency.

Most often, I’m not even consciously opening the work email app. I’m very very unconsciously cycling through all the usual suspects (hi, Instagram) and scrolling until something disgusts me and I set my phone down for a little while until I need another dopamine hit.

I’m probably not the only one who has a complicated relationship with my phone.

You’re terrible for me but I neeeeeeed you. My focus over this next year is untangling that relationship. The easiest first step is to take my work email off my phone. Wanna come with me?