A few weeks ago, a colleague IMed me just after 7:30 pm. It took me exactly 16 minutes to respond.<\/p>\n
The next morning, she took it upon herself to sit me down and lecture me on the importance of \u201cbeing reachable\u201d and \u201cresponse time.\u201d
\n<\/p>\n
16 minutes, guys. After hours.<\/p>\n
I listened, but was slowly searching for an answer to the one question that immediately rose up in my head in response\u2026<\/p>\n
I know that a lot of us have a knee jerk response to this \u2014 thoughts of our own emotional responses when someone doesn\u2019t pick up, or leaves a text unanswered for too many hours.<\/p>\n
But seriously, that aside.<\/p>\n
Must we live our daily lives in constant emotional preparation?<\/p>\n
Must we always keep our awareness piqued for interruption? Must we always have ourselves primed and at the ready, fully mentally available, in the event someone needs to reach us?<\/p>\n
With work: even if we had a big launch going out the door, or a true fire, I argue that 16 minutes is well within reason \u2014 especially after hours. There are a million things in normal, human being life that take fifteen minutes, a great many of them relegated to the \u201cafter work hours\u201d in which I undeniable was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cBeing reachable\u201d and \u201cresponse time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,8,9],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-direction","tag-consulting","tag-empathy","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n