{"id":1248,"date":"2016-01-21T11:21:34","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T16:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=1248"},"modified":"2016-01-21T16:39:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T21:39:55","slug":"intention-and-intentional-drift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=1248","title":{"rendered":"Intention and Intentional Drift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/oneword.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1249 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/oneword.jpg?resize=243%2C66&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"oneword\" width=\"243\" height=\"66\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">My #oneword for 2016 is intention. I have, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=1235\">as I wrote earlier this year<\/a>, felt a bit drifty, particularly in the area of my own professional growth and renewal. I want to read, think and write more in the coming year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Oliver Quinlan&#8217;s recent post on <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/the-slackerati\/habit-forming-by-leveraging-the-new-34771c2523c5#.29zr2qwn0\">habit forming<\/a> spoke powerfully about the issues around intention and drift. He is using a\u00a0new job in a new city\u00a0to make new habits to help stem the drift that can happen as we move through our lives.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But, when we chatted briefly on Twitter about his article, he also cautioned against too much intention:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/witchyrichy\">@witchyrichy<\/a> Yeah, or drift in the right places&#8230; Some areas it&#8217;s good to not be too prescriptive, but best to choose those areas.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Oliver Quinlan (@oliverquinlan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/oliverquinlan\/status\/687627109104259072\">January 14, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" type=\"mce-no\/type\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>I suggested this be called &#8220;intentional drift&#8221; as a way of being aware that you were doing it and, in this case, it&#8217;s OK. If not, you could end up like the siblings in <em>The Accidental Tourist<\/em>, endlessly debating the best way to do things for fear of not getting it exactly right. So while I know my areas of intention, what about the drift? While I&#8217;m not sure it&#8217;s the right word to apply here: I am going to let email drift a bit. Lots of productivity experts seem to agree that it can be a distraction; I always have my email in an open tab, just waiting for the number to change so I can pop back and see what&#8217;s happening. It is rarely an emergency but dealing with it makes me feel productive. Plus, I&#8217;ve noticed that my somewhat obsessive email nature leads me to feel annoyed with those who have found a better relationship with their email and sometimes go a whole day without answering.\u00a0I find myself wondering if they received it or are, perhaps, avoiding me. \u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;ll take the advice of Raymond Tomlinson, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2016\/01\/advice-from-the-man-who-sent-the-first-email\/421602\/\">man who sent the first email<\/a>,\u00a0and make email a less obtrusive part of my life. It can drift but intentionally. <\/p>\n<p>The problem is how to reset the expectations I have established? I have thought about trying <a href=\"http:\/\/dougbelshaw.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/01\/what-i-learned-from-turning-my-out-of-office-auto-replies-on-for-a-month\/\">Doug Belshaw&#8217;s method<\/a> of putting up an out of office message that explains my new routines around email and suggests other ways of getting in touch with me when the issue is urgent.\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Maybe I could use some of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/daily-shouts\/why-the-people-you-e-mailed-arent-e-mailing-you-back-by-week?mbid=nl_012016_Daily&amp;CNDID=24512107&amp;spMailingID=8454694&amp;spUserID=MTIwNzM5NDk4Mjc1S0&amp;spJobID=842221165&amp;spReportId=ODQyMjIxMTY1S0\">these excuses<\/a> from <em>The New Yorker<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 But, Dux Raymond Sy, who posted a link to the article about Tomlinson had what might be the best\u00a0suggestion: <\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/witchyrichy\">@witchyrichy<\/a> don&#8217;t respond \ud83d\ude42 \u2014 Dux Raymond Sy (@meetdux) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/meetdux\/status\/685499454401675266\">January 8, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;ll get the message and probably not even think twice about it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My #oneword for 2016 is intention. I have, as I wrote earlier this year, felt a bit drifty, particularly in the area of my own professional growth and renewal. I want to read, think and write more in the coming year. Oliver Quinlan&#8217;s recent post on habit forming spoke powerfully about the issues around intention &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=1248\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Intention and Intentional Drift<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[395,394],"class_list":["post-1248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thinking-out-loud","tag-drift","tag-intention"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4X3L0-k8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1248"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1259,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions\/1259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}