Sounds like we feel similarly about a lot of this stuff. For a few years now, I’ve been trying to keep my phone notifications very low. The devices I generally use for reading/writing do not get any notifications.
Despite these ideas mostly not being new to me, I got value from this post for two reasons:
1. This validates my own experience. It moves me away from believing “I am personally easily distracted, so I keep distractions low” and towards believing “maybe a lot of people are perpetually semi-distracted by their notifications.” Although I’m not sure how big of an update to make there.
2. I’m glad you described the intellectual mosh pit thing. My feed is full of interesting, engaging stuff too. I think I experience approximately the same effect you’re experiencing from that. I’ll have to think about whether I want to do anything about this. Especially since I frequently check Facebook when I’m feeling low-energy.
(Side note: I wrote this comment while my partner was finishing up a phone call. I found myself pretty distracted by the feeling that they were going to enter the room and talk to me at any moment. Even if I was just going to have to say “give me 10 minutes alone, please,” it feels distracting to anticipate that interruption. Hmm.)
Thanks for sharing!
Personally, I don’t really blame you or think less of you for this screwup. I never got the impression that you are the sort of person who should be sent confidential book review drafts. Maybe you’d disagree, but that seems like a misunderstanding of your role to me.
It seemed clear to me that you made yourself available to confidential reports regarding conflict, abuse, and community health. Not disagreements with a published book. It makes sense that you didn’t have a habit of mentally flagging those emails as confidential.
Regardless, I trust that you’ve been more careful since then, and I appreciate how clearly you own up to this mistake.
I want to offer my +1 that I strongly believe Julia’s trustworthy for reports regarding Leverage.