The Space Between Notifications

I spent twenty-five years in data, CRM and marketing.

If my inbox was quiet, something was probably wrong.

Email.

Slack.

Teams.

WhatsApp.

Phone calls.

Meetings.

Zoom meetings.

The next meeting about the meeting.

Being interruptible wasn't a flaw, it was the job and eventually I stopped noticing.

My brain adapted and it became incredibly efficient at switching context. Wonderfully responsive and always available, always connected.

Always... interrupted.

For a long time I thought that was productivity. Then, slowly, I started to think that a lot of the interruption was nonsense. I remember sitting one evening clearing more than a hundred emails and messages that had arrived that day. When I finally reached the bottom, I realised almost none of them had actually moved anything forward. We'd simply spent a day discussing work instead of doing it.

The interruptions seemed to exist for their own sake, rarely adding anything that a short pause and a thoughtful conversation couldn’t better a hundredfold. They became noise rather than substance. And I knew I was part of it too, I started many of the conversations these messages related to.

So I tried to fight back.

I’d only respond to the messages I thought needed a reply, only those that added something. I’d only start a thread if it was something I genuinely thought would not be better dealt with on a call or in a meeting.

That made it worse.

I’d get messages about messages on multiple platforms. “Have you seen…”, “Have you read..”, “Did you get a chance…”, “Your thoughts on…”

I’m not saying people didn’t deserve a reply.

I am saying that there are more efficient ways of managing multiple tiny and largely inconsequential discussions.

So yes, for a long time, I thought everything everywhere all at once was productivity.

Now I'm not so sure.

So, now I am not in that career anymore, I thought I’d be able to focus much more easily. But the truth is it isn’t easy. Nobody set out to steal my attention. But somewhere along the way I became someone who struggled to sit still with a single thought. My brain became optimised for interruption at the expense of concentration.

Even now, I catch myself reaching for Instagram without thinking.

Not because I particularly want to. But somewhere along the line my thumb learned the route before my brain did. I don't think I'm unusual. I think I'm well trained.

This journey of setting up Literatea is one way of me trying to regain that amazing feeling of concentrating on something for a couple of hours. That warm feeling in your brain when you solve a puzzle that has been vexing you for the last hour, the unmatchable feeling of being so lost in a story that you forget about the 50 emails from accounts.

If you feel similar, welcome to Literatea – let’s try and reclaim this joy that being constantly connected has unintentionally been squeezed out of many experiences. And if you still scroll Instagram, I get it – we’re all in recovery!