Ignorance is bliss

I recently read that email takes up 28% of our time at work, which is a startling statistic in itself. Clearly, there are many things we can do to boost our productivity and many books have been written on the subject.

However, I'm not here to give any advice about when you should check your emails or the steps you should take to declutter your inbox.  

Steal back time...learn to let go

This did get me thinking about one thing that we can probably all do more of as we try to steal back some of that precious time that gets so invaded by the constant barrage of requests that bombard us. 

I often find myself trying to understand some issue or other that I have had no personal experience with but which may have been discussed in an email or during a conference call, and that for some reason known only to me, I somehow need to contemplate further.

Well, you'll be glad to hear that I'm beginning to learn my lesson and that sometimes you just, well, need to let go. For one, there's only so much that our brains can take, secondly we don't actually need to understand some things and thirdly we should accept our own limitations and move on to something else.

Surrender and admit defeat

Now I'm not advocating that we should just dismiss these 'intrusions'  - in fact, trying to work something out is very admirable and can get you plenty of brownie points, but sometimes we just need to surrender - for our own mental wellbeing as much as anything. 

There are just some things that are best left to the experts, people who know a darn sight more than either me or you will ever know. So leave them to it, ask a question or two by all means, but if you can see that there are no gains in prolonging the agony, quit while you're ahead. 

As knowledge workers, we're constantly expected to absorb and process so much information, our time is constantly taken up with email, meetings and deadlines. It's a wonder sometimes how we are able to carry on at all. 

There are some things we'll never have first hand experience of, so there's no shame in admitting it - to others if need be but most importantly to ourselves.

Our time is better spent elsewhere and productivity will be the beneficiary. As will our mental sanity. There are also plenty of things we don't need to know or get involved in. 

Ignorance in this sense can definitely be blissful.