Email is Taking Over and Only You can Stop It
“You run the day, or day runs you” – Twitter user
I will admit it, email sometimes runs my day.There are days that I feel like I live in my in-box. It starts off innocently enough with a “quick” email check in the early morning, and then, it’s late afternoon.
Choose to live your life on purpose and determine how you want to run your day. Is it more important to respond to an email within 45 seconds or to do meaningful work? There is nothing like a quick response, but by offering this service every day, all the time, you are training your customers, colleagues and even friends and family that you are waiting by your email to respond to them, immediately. More importantly, it is distracting you. Because there is no such thing as an effective multi-tasker, this lack of focus will seep into the quality of your work and creativity. I understand that technology has advanced the immediacy of how we communicate, but until there was email, I never thought regular mail was slow. Now that we have Twitter and instant messaging and text services, email seems slow. Keeping up with the speed of technology will only slow you down.
There will always be someone demanding your attention, and you have to decide how to give it to them in a way that works best for you. I get it, you are busy. You have lots of work to do. Stop checking your email every 3 minutes and see how that changes your work. See if it affects how busy you really are.
See what my minimalist mentors have to say about checking email.
- Joshua Becker from Becoming Minimalist: You remove the mail from your mailbox everyday. Apply the same principle to your Inbox. To accomplish this, if you can answer an email in less than two minutes, do it right away. If it will take longer, move it into a “work in progress” folder.
- Leo from Zen Habits: “I got this idea from Mike Davidson, whose article came at a perfect time as I was limiting other things in my life, and was also trying to keep my emails short at that time. His 5-sentence rule (no email can be longer than 5 sentences) fit in perfectly with everything else I tried to do, and I’ve adopted it. It forces you to write only what’s essential.”
- Everett Bogue from Far Beyond the stars: “Eight hours of receiving and reacting to email will similarly not get important work done. When you batch respond to email during fifteen minute intervals once a day, you get less email and also have many empty hours in the day. Empty hours are uncomfortable, and I’m convinced that most of us are terrified of them. This is why we spend all day hitting refresh buttons waiting to react to messages that don’t matter. This is why we fill up our schedules with meaningless meetings which ask questions that we already know the answers to.”
I have heard the message and understood the point, but until now, have not been able to consistently limit the amount of time I spend with my email. That changes now. For one week, I will only be checking my email at approximately 10 and 3 each day, spending no more than 1 hour responding to or sending email. At the end of the week, I will reassess and see what the next step is, to reduce all of my internet interactions.
When I was searching for an image to use for this post, I used the keywords, “checking email”. The majority of images were of people checking their email while on vacation. Please, stop the madness.
Do you want to spend your day reacting to email or creating good work and enjoying life? How often do you check your email?
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20 Responses to “Email is Taking Over and Only You can Stop It”
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I sometimes think that email could be the #1 bane of our techno-existence. But you’re absolutely right — breaking the email habit is tough! But it is doable. Sticking to the twice-or-thrice daily schedule is an important step.
On occasion, when the temptation is strongest, I just go cold turkey and call a Digital Detox (day or afternoon or whatever). Just walk away. There are so many other things in life worth our time.
Great post. I’m off for a walk. Be well!
Courtney,
Great post. I love Everett Bogue’s quote about email. We are terrified of empty hours and we do check to make it seem as if we’re so busy.
Checking email on vacation – I’m guilt as charged. It’s a hazard of being in a 24/7 sales environment that I hope to leave behind in the not too distant future.
Thank you!
Hello Courtney,
I tend to go through pases with my e-mail – when I am disciplined I spend 1 hour in the morning, 1 hour in the evening – which is plenty. My focus is solely on that task and I fly through them. During the day I am more productive and generally my efficiency is better.
I often start to slack off, perhaps I am waiting for something ‘impportant’ to come through, perhaps I am trying to fill time or procrastinating, whatever the reasons, it distacts me and I end up achieving little. You are right, a whole day can easily be written off!
Back to the strict discipline, thanks for the reminder,
Kate.
Sorry, the spelling in that last post was atrocious! I meant phases with my e-mail and not sure why important needed 2 p’s!
This is so relevant for me right now. I love Leo’s 5-sentence rule!
For me, email is addicting because email is where I get surprised by new, exciting opportunities. It’s so tempting to check it every free minute.
I’m implementing a twice-a-day policy, just like you, starting today.
Matt, I don’t know about you but for me, the first day was tough. I stuck to it but was tempted to check!
I tend to get totally engrossed in whatever I’m doing and lose track of time, especially when sitting in front of the computer, so I’m retraining myself with a kitchen timer. I set it for 30 minutes for each task: cleaning, computer, reading, exercise, etc. When the buzzer sounds, I switch to something else, anything else, for the next half-hour. It’s making me more aware of what 30 minutes actually feels like, and I’m getting a lot more accomplished!
I love the 5 sentence rule, I am going to implement that one on my emails and my blog.
I struggle with this, too. Last year and the beginning of this year – for about 5 whole months – I only checked my e-mail (or anything else on the internet) on the weekend. Now I’m back to checking my e-mail lots every day. I am going back to school this fall and I will definitely have to keep this in check so I can be productive in both school and studies at home. Thank you for the reminder!