I feel like this is the greatest idea I’ve ever had.

I had six sets of unread texts from friends. And these weren’t just like one short text each. They were full-on multi-part conversations. Some of them have been sitting there, ignored, since August (luckily I turned off read receipts a long time ago).

Every day for the past week, I’ve opened these texts, skimmed them, and become exhausted at the prospect of replying. Today, I was trying to watch New Girl but the guilt of ignoring my friends became too much to bear. So I decided to grant myself exactly an hour to reply to everyone, giving me ten minutes per person.

I’ve never been so focused on anything in my life. Instead of an obligatory task, responding became a race against the clock. I’m competitive, so beating each ten minute timer was satisfying in its own right. It took me eight minutes to respond to one, six to respond to another, only three minutes to respond to a third……… I started at 6:13PM and finished by 6:50. I feel wildly accomplished and I can finally watch TV in peace.

I wish I could say that from now on I’ll reply to texts the moment they arrive, but I’ll probably just end up doing this again next month.