How to Fight the Fight Against Email

The temptation to read your emails the minute they arrive in your inbox is hard to resist. Emails by their nature are disruptive, annoying (mostly), and above all distracting. And we all hate distraction don't we?

Tom Davenport of the Harvard Business Review has written this article (via the 99%)which suggests that we actually enjoy email's distraction:

“There is the everlasting hope of something new and exciting. Our work and home lives can be pretty boring, and we're always hoping that something will come across the ether that will liven things up.”

I'll be the first to admit that I always feel a weird sense of pride when I get my inbox to 0. I give myself a metaphorical slap on the back for achieving email minimalism. But one day a few weeks ago I stepped back and looked at my working day. I realised I was spending a huge amount of time reacting to emails instead of actively working on my projects. This would be okay if I worked in admin, but I don't. I'm paid to think, and thinking isn't something you can just switch on and off like a light switch. It requires discipline, routine, music / silence, and above all, focus. And there is nothing that can destroy focus as much as email (well maybe twitter but that's a post for another time).

So, two weeks ago I began to ween myself off. My first tactic was to change my Mac Mail to only search for mail every 20 minutes. This didn't work because I missed out on too many important "why the fuck aren't you at this meeting??" mails. So I changed it back.

Next I tried the "out of sight, out of mind approach"and kept my mail minimised for 80% of the day. This is working well. But I do stray. If I do give in and look at a mail immediately and it's from an unknown source I hit delete straight away without ever reading the content of the mail. This too is working well.

One of the most effective tactics I've found is ignoring the "urgent" labeling that somehow manages to make it's way on to 80% of my mails. It turns out nothing is really that urgent, and if it is, they ring. I've ignored about 40 "urgent" mails this weak and nothing bad has happened.

If you're having similar email problems try some of these tactics out and let me know if they work. Or maybe you have some of your own I haven't tried yet

I based this article on articles I read on the 99%, especially this one.