For thirteen years, I’ve responded to every single email that has landed in my Inbox.
Sure, it takes me a while to get to them sometimes, but I respond. I always respond. And I take pride in the fact that I always respond.
A few months ago, I stopped responding.
There’s a quote I heard around that time that was attributed to Shauna Niequist, the author of Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes. She said, “I allowed myself to disappoint the wrong people in my life. I was so caught up in not disappointing my agent, my publisher, my fans, my Twitter followers, that I ended up disappointing my son Henry and my husband… The people who’re closest to me, they’re the most likely to get shat on/fucked up by the way that I have fallen in love with my business.”
I realized, in that moment, that I would never again commit to answering all my emails. I’d answer what I could, when I could, but I was no longer going to worry about disappointing a random person who I had never heard from before and who wanted to know all about freelancing without once having looked at The International Freelancer website, at the expense of my time, my family, and my mental health.
I realized, in that moment, that I would never spend more than a few minutes at a time on social media again. I logged off and turned off notifications, so that now I don’t even know when I’m tagged or mentioned until I choose to log in.
I realized, in that moment, that my relationships would involve a lot more coffee and a lot less @ replies.
And I decided in that moment that I would no longer spend hours at my computer, aimlessly moving from window to window without knowing what I was trying to accomplish. I learned how to pick things, I learned the art of extreme focus, and I started taking massive and concrete action in the right areas.
I created a new course. I’m working on another one. I’ve re-launched my Psychology Today blog. I’m about to launch a new LinkedIn one. I’m writing more, experimenting more. I’m—often—having more fun.
I’m working fewer hours, yet I’m more productive. My business is growing. And I’m happier at work and at play.
But the best thing, the most important thing, that I’ve done? I’ve stopped feeling guilty.
No, my house does not sparkle. Far from it. “Housekeeping really isn’t your thing,” my husband said to me the other day. I might have taken that as a criticism a few years ago, even though it wasn’t intended as one.
Because you know what? Housekeeping isn’t my thing. It isn’t even in the realm of the top fifty things I’d like to be good at. It’s not his thing either. That’s not a criticism, that’s reality. My husband knows it and I know it. And therefore, for most of our marriage, we’ve had a housecleaner.
I’m a really good businessperson, I make a great income, I have a child who is happy and excited about life. I’m stretched thin enough, thanks very much. So the sink will get cleaned when it gets cleaned. I don’t worry about it.
The real problem here is that women are often the ones with this burden. I work more hours than my husband and I also spend more time looking after my child than him, but no one ever said, “Oh Sam’s housekeeping skills suck, just look at his messy house.” And no school ever asked my husband to come volunteer and then acted pissy when told he had to work in the mornings. It’s always the woman, even when she’s the primary breadwinner. In fact, research shows that when women out-earn their husbands, they actually start doing more of the housework to compensate for the fact.
When gender roles are reversed, as they routinely are in modern relationships—ours included—women are made to feel guilty that they aren’t managing the house well enough and men are asked stupid questions about feeling insignificant when their wives earn more than them. The pressure often comes from outside the household, not from within it.
I decided that I was better off disappointing my son’s school than I was disappointing my son himself. That my editor would be a better recipient of a missed date than my husband. That I’d rather some random person judge me for having a messy house than my family judge me for being unavailable and angry because I’m just so goddamn tired trying to fit in everything the world deems important enough for me to be doing.
Surprisingly though, as I’ve got my priorities straight and just eliminated what isn’t contributing substantially to my life at the moment, I find that I’m increasingly disappointing no one at all.