The Work Undone

I famously have some issues with email procrastination. It’s pretty classic situation: I didn’t reply to an email right away, and I feel avoidant about the fact that you've been waiting 4 days, and that feels really bad after two weeks, which induces guilt about the fact I didn't reply for a month.

Here’s the thing. Every so often, for reasons largely beyond me, I sit down for a day or week and MOSTLY clear my inbox: I send a bunch of messages saying so sorry for late reply, and I mean every one of them, and I slowly chug my way until there's only a few unanswered messages left.

But I really, really struggle to get that down to zero. When there’s ~10 emails left in the queue, some dastardly imp inside me pulls me away.

I used to think this was a classic selection effect: I cleared out the easier ones, and what's left is the hardest of the hard, and that's why it's left. But empirically I don't think that's actually true: I often clear some of the hardest ones first, and then some easy ones, and what's left is a mish-mash of easy and hard.

What it feels like, emotionally, is that some part of me doesn't want the work to be done; that some part of me dreads having answered all the emails, or (better) secretly wants the comfort of the partially-unfinished task. If anyone can explain this to me I'd be grateful.