Everyone should turn off their email for at least two hours a day. Non-profit leaders, houswives, students, professors, everyone. How did I arrive at this conclusion? How can I dare to speak this heresy?
Back when I was a young kid, we used to have to walk down our driveway to check the mail box for a post. On the rare occasion that I had the expectation that something might be coming in the mail, I would sit at the front window and look for the postman. I would jump up regularly and go down and open the mailbox and look to see if it had arrived yet. In my young mind, it seemed like the more I looked at the box, the quicker it would come. Email has become a modern day version of this ritual for many.
Clearly I don’t understand how busy you are, and how important it is that you have access to your email 24/7, but here’s the problem: Email, which many people believe is the height of productivity, is actually getting in the way of being productive for many people. The constant instant access of email, the temptation to check to see if you have email, the misguided notion that email is the most productive form of work you could be doing, and the feeling that if you write lots of email you’ve gotten a lot done, all lead us to be tied up with the emotion of email.
Try this experiment:
1. Turn off the email function on your phone for two hours each day. Not just any two hours, but the two hours when you’re likely to be at your mental peak. If you’re a morning person, do it then, if an evening person, do likewise.
2. Turn off the sound function on your computer email. That little “bing” has turned you into one of Pavlov’s dogs. When you hear the sound you stop all the work you’re doing and deal with the email.
3. Pick 3 or 4 times a day to respond to email. For me, I try to answer emails at the folllowing times. 5:30am, 9:30am, 1pm, 5pm. In between those times I turn off my email, dont’ look at it and just put my head down and work.
Are you addicted to your email? Is there some reason you can’t cut the leash? Let me know what you think.
David Curry
