Has this happened to you? You’ve received a text message, a WhatsApp, a DM of sorts and you feel immense pressure to answer it immediately.

Because, if you don’t, then what won’t the other person think? They need that quick response, right?And yet, you notice that all this texting and all the interruptions are interfering with the flow of your day.
Here’s what I have to offer.

Thinking about what others are thinking

Your problem is your thinking about what the others are thinking, savvy? (Try and read that sentence with the intonation of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, as it sounds like a thing that he would say.) That’s what’s creating that urge for you to reply to the message. Well, it’s one of the things at least.

You will never know what they are thinking. You can’t. It’s theirs.  It takes place inside their brain. Even if they tell you what they are thinking, you can’t know whether what they say was really what they thought.

So, you see, it’s your thinking about their thinking, and that’s good news because you have control over that. You have control over you. You can change your thinking and in doing so change your Pavlov reaction to want to reply instantly.

You might be believing that you are not a good friend or partner if you don’t reply to messages instantly. Others won’t like you anymore. Heck, you’re almost sure of that, because you yourself don’t like it when others don’t reply right away.
How do you go about changing that?

Instant replies are not needed

The simple solution would be to just start believing instant replies are not needed, nor expected.

It’s just that the idea of replying right away is so ingrained in you that that’s a tough cookie to chew.

Well, let me flip things around and offer you a different perspective.

I have a friend, who almost never replies instantly to his text messages. On the one hand, it drives me nuts. On the other hand, I know that he doesn’t and I know it doesn’t mean anything. If I need something urgently I have to call.

I’m sure you know someone in your life who is like that and you probably simply take their not-so-instant messaging tendencies into account without a second thought.

Here is another example not directly related to messaging. I have another friend who has designated Sunday to be his day to spend with his family. No other appointments. Keeping Sundays free of outside appointments was and is sacred to him and he never made an exception.

Our group of friends knows this. Period. We may be annoyed by it at times, but we never make it mean anything about us and so we plan around his Sundays, or we plan something without him. That is just the way it is.

When you look at it this way, does that help you divorce the idea that instant replies are the be all end all?

What if you thought: “When I am consistent about replying to messages when it suits me, I will be happier and more productive. Others will catch on soon enough.”

Does that relieve you of that sense of urgency?

I bet you, that you feel a lot more sanguine when you think that. See if that makes it easier for you to continue what you were doing when your phone plinks.

Let me know in the comments if any of this rings true to you!

Are you anything like me? Can you agonize over even the simplest of decisions so long that your family makes fun of you? “Oh no, here he/she goes again, needing to make a choice. This will probably take a while. We’ll just be waiting outside okay?”

Choosing is a skill you can learn. It is just like anything else. What you practice, you get good at.

The more you choose something, anything, over something else, the more you start experiencing how empowering choice feels.  Being empowered feels good. That’s when our brain gives us a little pat on the back and tells us, “Uwww, I like this feeling, let’s get us more of that”.

Positive reinforcement at work.

When we get rewarded for our behavior we are more likely to repeat it.

What’s the key?  Start small! Start with something easy.

For those of you into positive reinforcement dog training, you don’t start teaching your dog a new cue in a dog park with fifty squirrels running up and down trees and a ditto number of dogs trying to bark them down. No, you start at home, in a quiet familiar place, right?

When you’re learning to swim, you first learn in the shallow end of the pool (well, maybe not all of us, some were taught using the swim or drown method, but I guess you can see where I’m going).

The upside to starting with smaller choices is that the opportunities to practice present themselves on lots of occasions. Lots of choices mean lots of feeling empowered means lots of pats on the back from our own brain means lots of likelihood you will repeat the act of choosing.

So. A practical example.

The other day I had to buy some new pens. Super simple right. For most people, sure. Well, I tell you, I can make the department store feel like purgatory for myself when I’m faced with a choice of over 40 different pens of different types at different price points, which I was. Soooo many things to consider. I want the writing not to be too scratchy, there shouldn’t be too much blotchiness, the lines shouldn’t be too thick, nor too thin. It should feel comfortable in my hands and most importantly not break the bank, because you can only spend your money once, right? If you get the wrong one you will be throwing money away. And we don’t want to be wasteful, do we? There’s the environment to consider. Etc. etc. I mean, I can make choosing what pen to buy last longer than the longest baseball double header.

So, I made the decision ahead of time that I was just going to roughly test a couple, discard the ones that were absolutely terrible, and just get three different ones, knowing full well that I might not like one or all of them in the end. I just wanted to try on decision-making for size, with little consequences. And I did and I was happy.

I notice myself reaching for one pen more than the others. Instead of telling myself, that I wasted money on the others and should have done 2 more days of research beforehand, which I normally totally could have been guilty of doing, I tell myself:

“Awesome! Because you chose action and decided, you now know which pens you don’t want.”. And that feels good! It’s repeat-worthy because it’s moving forward, rather than staying stuck in maybe-this-maybe-that-land.

The more you feel good about the act of choosing, of deciding, of taking action, the more likely you are to repeat it! When you’ve mastered the skill in a low-risk environment, you can up your game and you will see that it transfers to more impactful decisions as well.

Am I a pro yet? Are you kidding me? I just told you I was practicing with buying pens and I haven’t told you the part where my brain was throwing up a mental road block in the form of: “What color pen? Pink, orange or blue? Pink’s nice too… Photographs well… It’s one of your brand colors… Isn’t ending up with three blue pens a tad bit boring?” And so forth and so forth.  

I notice my practice paying off though. I am more and more aware of how good it feels to choose and that there’s less drama involved in potentially getting it wrong than I thought.

So, start small and practice often people!