It works best if you leave the phone in hands-free. Hit the messages button. User ID. Password. Then you've got a second at most, while the disembodied voice says, "You have . . ." if you don't want to hear the actual number of messages you've got.

All voice mail systems are not the same at this point. With ours, it's a little two-step--7-6, 7-6, 7-6--which I do with my index and middle fingers. The first combination is a little plodding, but the rhythm and the exhilaration take effect and soon there's a lilt like a trill on a piano keyboard.

What am I doing? I'm deleting messages--unseen, unheard--from my voice mail box. It's desperation. It's scandalous. It's intoxicating.

Telephone as Torture

The telephone itself is an instrument of horror and torture for me. I'm an introvert in sociological terms: I like to be left alone. I'd rather stay home than make phone calls to plan a vacation. I'll endure pain for months rather than call my doctor for a chat. I'm a baby boomer in generational terms: I don't like to be told what to do. The notion that anybody can call me at any time and I must talk to them--whether at work or at home--runs contrary to how I run the rest of my life, making choices about what's important and what's not.

I don't do this 7-6 dance very often--just twice. Okay, maybe three times. I generally try to follow all the good advice I've ever gotten about managing communications in general and managing voice mail in particular. I reserve time every day. I delegate whenever I can. I open my mail over the trash can. But when I put together the snail mail, the e-mail, the voice mail, the notes dropped on my desk--it's too much. And occasionally I fall behind. I feel like the bad guy in Witness who gets buried alive in a grain silo. And because I'm telephobic to begin with, voice mail is the first thing to go.

If you had 84 messages in your voice mail box, what would you do? For years I would lie awake at night, obsessing about what could be in there. It was the unknown that got me: 82 of the messages might be trash, FYI stuff, repetitive. But was there one that was really vital? A message from. . . okay, who? My boss? Unlikely. Although not telephobic, he hates voice mail, too. My mother? She'll call back. My team? They know better. A headhunter with the job of my dreams? Hmmmm.

Learning the Dance

The 7-6 thing started innocently enough. I had set aside time to catch up. I listened to the first message, a reminder of a meeting already on my calendar--7-6. The second message, something I'd already been told in the hallway--7-6, halfway through. I knew from the name on the third message that the issue was handled--7-6, at the beginning. Huh. Let's just dump the first half of these--like acknowledging I'll never read my backlog of Time magazine. Hmmmm. What if we just ditch the rest? Like chunking a stack of junk mail into the wastebasket. Catch up. Start fresh. Heaven.

And you know what's happened? Nothing. I didn't miss anything. Nobody yelled at me, the company didn't fold, the sky didn't fall. And that's made me wonder about some other things that we've started to take for granted. Pagers and cell phones and alarms on Palm Pilots--what do we really need? How many issues can the average person deal with at the same time, anyway? Are we sacrificing thoughtfulness for responsiveness? It's looking that way to me.

I still block out an hour a day for e-mail, voice mail, and the rest. That's all I can manage in good conscience, although it's not nearly enough. And I've put a message on my voice mail asking people to e-mail instead of leaving a message. My assistant picks up my phone whenever she can. But what's helped my attitude toward voice mail the most is knowing that although it may be a bottomless pit, there's this little ladder up the side--labeled 7-6.

I'm still looking for the magical time-management tip that will triple the hours in each day. When that happens, I'll answer all my mail, meet with everyone who wants to meet with me, read everything anyone recommends, go to all my kids' sporting events, and make my own pasta from scratch. In the meantime, write, don't call.

LOIS MAASSEN dodges the telephone in the Information Technology department at Herman Miller.