delete

There are a few down-sides to electronic communication.

One of them is coming back from four weeks' holiday and opening up your e-mail.

The plus side of all this electronic communication is the awareness that if it had been a physical letter-box, I'd have been buried alive in an absolute avalanche.

The down-side is that there's far more mail than the postie would ever deliver over that sort of length of time.

2787 e-mails begged (by their 'boldness') for my attention. And that's before I open the file labelled 'junk'.

I mean ....

I have no illusions at all that I am either that popular or that important.

But, like proximity to death, such a volume of e-mails fairly concentrates the mind.

Things that might in other circumstances have warranted a read today seem singularly less significant. The 'Delete' button separates the wheat of the really important from the chaff of the inconsequential.

And on my first day back, after 28 days for reflection, I'm thinking that's a pattern I probably need to adopt. Getting priorities right - and sticking simply with them.

Hitting the 'Delete' button and simply saying 'No' to things that aren't all that pressing.

I'm full of fine resolutions when I start back! But at least today I stuck to those good intentions.