I should be religious about inputs. I have heard this phrase “be religious” from time to time, and I think what people mean by this is to learn to say no to negative influences. Like if you decided to quit smoking and drinking, your friends might say that you got religious, because you decided to choose a healthier lifestyle. So, in that same concept, I think I need to be more religious about inputs. What are the inputs, you may ask? Well, first and foremost would be email, followed by SMS text messages. Then you might have chat messages through various apps, social media DMs, voice mails, and snail mail letters. As I catalog this today, I realize that my inputs are numerous and scattered.
What would it mean to be religious about this? First, it would mean to be minimalist, but more importantly, narrow and restrict the amount of inputs that come into my life and seriously improve my reaction to them. I wonder if, if I severely limited inputs, I would be more stable? You wonder sometimes what the triggers are in life that cause you to get discouraged, overwhelmed, or some other negative emotion. What if most of this was happening because of the unpredictable nature of the inputs in your life? So I am starting a process to narrow, limit inputs but also to filter them so that only the important ones make it to me for processing. I want to focus all those inputs into one channel and then I want to limit how much time I spend with them.
A concept that has been bouncing around in my head for a while now is this idea, reading email is NOT work. Sometimes people think that they are being productive by processing inputs, but I wonder if this is true at all. Some inputs, like a new customer, would be valuable, but most other inputs are people wanting you to do something for them. It is not a bad thing to help others, to serve others, but is it a bad thing to let your entire work life be dictated by the incoming flow of what other people want you to do for them? Regardless of who they are? Are you giving the same level of attention to your spouse, children, business partner, and employees that you give to advertisers, strangers, and random spammers?
It seems that controlling, filtering, and narrowing the actions that you take due to incoming messages does indeed require some religious intent. Reduce what hits you, narrow what you process, and keep focused on the priorities. This seems to require a system, and that system should be designed to aid you in making sure you stay focused on what is currently your highest priorities. Unfortunately, a lot of people think that their ultimate priority is to process everything that comes in. I wonder if that is accurate and healthy?
The truth is that most of us have become slaves to the notification. We have trained ourselves to respond immediately to every ping, every buzz, every red badge that appears on our screens. We have convinced ourselves that being responsive is the same thing as being productive. We have accepted the premise that availability equals value. But what if that premise is completely wrong? What if the most valuable thing you could do is to become unavailable to the noise and fully available to what actually matters?
I think about the people I admire most, the ones who seem to accomplish the impossible while maintaining some semblance of peace. They are not the ones who respond to every message within minutes. They are not the ones who pride themselves on inbox zero. They are the ones who have learned to guard their attention like a fortress. They have learned that saying yes to every input is the same as saying no to their own priorities. They have learned that the world will not collapse if they take six hours to respond to an email. In fact, the world could improve because they spent those six hours doing something that mattered.
So what does it look like to be religious about inputs? It starts with the recognition that not all inputs are created equal. Some inputs are life-giving. They connect you to people you love. They advance projects that matter. They bring information that helps you make better decisions. But most inputs are parasitic. They drain your energy without giving anything back. They create the illusion of urgency without any actual importance. They make you feel busy while keeping you from being productive.
The first step is to audit your inputs. Write them all down. Every channel, every app, every notification. Look at that list and ask yourself a hard question. Which of these actually serve my priorities? Which of these help me become the person I want to be? Which of these move me toward my goals? Be ruthless in your assessment. If an input does not clearly serve you, it is serving someone else. And that someone else is probably trying to sell you something or get you to do something for them.
The second step is to eliminate. Not reduce, eliminate. Turn off notifications. Unsubscribe from email lists. Delete apps. Leave group chats. Stop checking things that do not matter. This will feel uncomfortable at first. You will worry that you are missing something important. You will feel the phantom buzz of notifications that are no longer there. But after a few days, something remarkable will happen. You will realize that nothing important was lost. The world kept spinning. Your relationships survived. Your work continued. And you gained something precious. You gained space to think.
The third step is to consolidate. Take the inputs that remain and funnel them into as few channels as possible. Instead of checking email in five different places, check it in one. Instead of monitoring ten different messaging apps, pick one or two and let people know that is where you can be reached. Instead of scattering your attention across a dozen platforms, focus it on the few that actually matter. This is not about being difficult or inaccessible. This is about being intentional. This is about making it easy for the right things to reach you and hard for the wrong things to get through.
The fourth step is to schedule. Decide when you will process inputs and when you will not. Maybe you check your email twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Maybe you return phone calls during a specific hour. You could review messages at the end of the day. The key is to make your inputs fit into your schedule, rather than letting them dictate it. This requires discipline. It requires you to resist the urge to check just one more time. It requires you to trust that if something is truly urgent, people will find a way to reach you. And if they cannot find a way to reach you, it probably was not that urgent.
The fifth step is to respond with intention. When you process inputs, do it with full attention. Do not skim. Do not multitask. Do not half listen while thinking about something else. Give each input the attention it deserves, which might be a lot or might be none at all. Some messages require thoughtful responses. Some require quick acknowledgments. Some require no response at all. Learn to tell the difference. Learn to let some things go unanswered. Learn that silence is sometimes the most honest response you can give.
This is not easy. We live in a culture that worships responsiveness. We have been conditioned to believe that being available is a virtue. We have been taught that ignoring a message is rude. But what if the real rudeness is allowing other people’s agendas to consume your life? What if the real disrespect is giving strangers more attention than you give your family? What if the real failure is spending your days reacting to inputs instead of creating outputs?
Being religious about inputs is not about being cold or uncaring. It is about being clear on what matters. It is about recognizing that your attention is finite and precious. It is about understanding that every yes to an input is a no to something else. It is about choosing to spend your energy on the people and projects that deserve it instead of scattering it across a thousand distractions that do not.
So I am making a commitment. I am going to be religious about inputs. I am going to guard my attention like it is the most valuable thing I own, because it is. I am going to say no to the noise so I can say yes to what matters. I am going to stop pretending that processing inputs is the same as doing work. I am going to stop letting other people’s priorities become my emergencies. I am going to create a system that serves me instead of serving the chaos.
And maybe, just maybe, I will find that the stability I have been searching for was always there, buried under a mountain of inputs that never mattered in the first place.
