Chapter Two

mE-mail

I was brought up on the teat of personal computing and Ive been taking computers apart since my first IBM XT. Ive held their sinew in my hands, and been drawn to the glowing processor like a moth to a bulb. Then one day it dawned on me that I had been tinkering with an analogue for my own consciousness. And this model could reveal some insights, some simple tools to make my internal processor run a little cooler.

When youre building a PC, you make sure that all the cables are connected, secured, labeled and wired correctly. All the basic connections have to be pristine. When you pop the case, there should be order and symmetry. The organization of components should be flawless. The diagrams should be accurate, the documentation complete. And in my case, little color coded nylon zip ties make the cables lie neater than a freshmans flat top on prom night.

As a metaphor for life, it would have been great if our parents, dare I even say our ancestors had prepared our systems with this attention to detail. We would never have to go through the frustration of a failed power supply (heart attack) or critical I/O error (stroke).

For most of us, the tangle of wires that we encounter when we look inside is a serious mess. We have trusted that the manufacturer has only used the highest quality components. We believed they used the best possible practices. We were confident in the inspecting, wiring, securing and testing. We were sure that UL would have our back.

But by the time we are old enough to be self-aware we realize that the system is flawed. There are glitches. When we pop-thecase, we see a mangled tangle of wires, and the documentation is nowhere to be found.

Conclusion? 1) The computer we were born with is of dubious construction. 2) The instructions that came with it are in Korean. 3) We dont read Korean.

We better carefully examine this system. We need to troubleshoot and repair- both hardware and software. We have to secure what works, and get rid of what doesnt.

For a brief time I worked in the cubical labyrinth of a major pharmaceutical manufacturer. My job was to attend everyone elses meeting. Thats what project managers do. Day after day,

I would watch people enter conference rooms and connect their laptops to projectors and get ready to run PowerPoint presentations, or teleconference to Bangladesh.

Usually, as they were innocently setting up, you would get a glance at their in-box. What I came away from this experience with horrified me. People who were the brightest of the bright, engineers, doctors, IT professionals, designers all of them displaying their dirty underwear on the wash-line. Some of these folks literally had hundreds of unanswered emails in their inbox. When you looked them in the eye, you could tell they werent sleeping well. Everyone there was always just a little jumpy.

As a working stiff who sits behind a computer, one of my greatest fears is to arrive at work in the early morning and find my in-box overflowing. Just knowing that I had 345 unanswered emails in my inbox would be enough to make me blow milk out my nose.

This is where my metaphor for the mind being like a personal computer becomes practical. Stop and think about it for a second. Think about your mind like an in-box. Think about the 300 things that have landed there in just the last minute or so.

What is it? Junk mail. The items that arent, are repeats of the same thoughts you have been dragging around in your inbox since the 3rd period in 8th grade.

This email comes into your consciousness, where it sits and awaits your attention <SYSTEM SOUND>. The universal law of email applies here. When too many email messages build up in your inbox; bad things happen. <CORRUPT OUTLOOK.PST FILE>

One day I wondered what would happen if I just delete these mEmails as they come in? I checked to make sure no one was looking. I reached out my hand and hit the invisible delete key.

What happened then was a millisecond of silence. One mEmail of space opened up on the hard drive. Wow, I thought it worked!

Then I gave thought to the pile of mEmail that I had been receiving all morning that were sitting there in the in-box of my mind. I thought....I wonder if there is a way to delete all of these? Of course! <Select All> <Delete>. It worked. More blessed silence, and this time a little snippit of peace that went along for the ride. I sat in my office chair, and imagined myself deleting these nagging little thoughts. For each mEmail I deleted, I could feel my blood pressure drop a peg.

Ceremony is important to Homo Sapiens. There is no need for a comprehensive list here, but its important to know that ceremony is a huge part of the programming.

If you want to change a behavior, or a thought or pattern, attach it to a physical action. Shake, and repeat.

The idea is simple. You are taking the most common behavior in your daily life deleting email, and applying it to your internal in-box. You are programming a delete key that wasnt in the first release of the OS. Yes, this is a huge upgrade.

Visualize this handy delete button and learn to use it. Place your thumb and index finger together. Press. Delete the spam. Clean up your inbox. Then, with practice and patience you can consider moving on to the next command.

<ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO PERMANENTLY DELETE THIS FILE?> <YES> <Return>