One of the little joys I feel each time I get on an airplane is the realisation the next few hours is ‘me’ time, there will be no calls, no messages, no pings, etc. There is something blissful about this.

Our lives are interrupted now by notifications from email, instant messaging platforms, SMS, and so on. There is an expectation of instant response and so when we don’t something must be wrong. Some days I wonder where this expectation of instant response has come from, just because when can, doesn’t mean we have to.

We’re falling in love with speed at the cost of sanity and we need a time out.

Zoe Scaman

We don’t need to go on a flight for a ‘time out’; turning notifications off is an often said productivity hack. Deeper than this we need the discipline of putting blocks in our schedules where we ‘go dark’ and do the work we need to do.

Responding immediately to everyone can ‘feel’ good as we ‘feel’ needed and important, but it can also be a way of hiding from the work we know we need to be doing. Stop hiding, do the work, the people will still be there.