Today marks the 30 days since I posted my breakup letter to Mr. Email and wanted to post an update. I wanted to come back, as promised, and posted how it went.
The Goods
I CAN DOOOO IT!!! - Yeah, it’s possible to only check your email twice a day and survive. It definitely took some self discipline and I wasn’t perfect everyday (see below) but it can work. What I noticed is that it was a lot like checking the ‘real’ mail. 40-50% was junk, 30% was purely informational and didn’t require a response, and the rest was actionable items and for the most part could be quickly answered and archived.
The Relief - Even though it was self imposed the ability to know that I don’t HAVE to check my email all day long, including on my phone, definitely relaxed me and every little bit helps, right?
Opened up other things - I noticed this mainly in the people that work for me. I could sit down and talk with my guys which is one of those things that I can’t do enough.
The Fails
The Pull – I’m not going to lie that the desire was there to check my email and in the beginning I was thinking about it more than I should. It got better with time but that Mr. Email is a desirable character.
Weekends – I pretty much said do whatever you want on the weekends and would check my email quite a bit which was absolutely dumb because as the weekend would suggest, I hardly had any emails but would therefore take away from other more important things (chilling, family time, reading, working out, etc.)
Peaks and valleys – As the 30 days went along I noticed myself checking my emails one, maybe two or even more times than that per day. Sometimes it would be EPIC fail. What I’m finding is that I think 3x per day is my ideal number. I like to check my email on my phone before I even step out of bed, then around lunch, then at the end of the day. If I don’t check during those times I’m more likely to check in between times.
Conclusions
I definitely want to continue with this pattern where it becomes standard habit and not just for 30 days. It did change my work flow (I have to make notes in Evernote to email someone later, still seems odd to me) but all for the better. Another interesting side point is that I noticed that since people knew about my little experiment that they would shift how they would contact me moving more to things like Twitter or IM. Anyway, it IS possible to get away from email and would love to hear how others deal with breaking the email addiction.
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David Gerbino
January 4th, 2009
Brad, breaking the email addiction is very hard. Congratulations for trying and sharing your experiences with us. What makes it hard for so many is our wor flow. For some we have Service Level Agreements to follow, important projects that we have to stay on top of, we could be waiting on a time sensitive answer, etc. To help me manage my email addiction I try to make use of Microsoft Outlooks email pop notifier. This way I can monitor incoming emails in real time while I work. I still have to check every two or three hours but I just check and do not respond. Also, I take work breaks to switch tasks or whatever and at these times I scan emails looking for important items. I sometimes even take a minute or two (no more than thagt) and answer those emails that are quick.
James Robert Lay
January 5th, 2009
Rock on bro! I just got back from a two week vacay in Paris (12/26 – 1/4) and checked email just twice for about a total of 20 minutes… basically just cleared out spam to make life easier when I got back.
My wife loved this and so did I.
The girls at the office took care of everything and only called in twice for a total of 5 minutes just checking in. The entire team did a super job while I was almost entirely MIA. They totally rock and will be taken care of.
When I got in this morning, I kid you not, I checked two weeks worth of email in about 1.5 hours.
Regarding my RSS feeds, I just skimmed them (about 45 new ones had come in) and responded only to yours as it was relevant.
Thanks for the post and update and good luck as you continue to manage Mr. Email.
Side note: my wife would kill me (has killed me) checking email in bed first thing in the morning… that has become a “no no”.
Brad
January 7th, 2009
@David – Yeah, good point. We’ve found that even for our applications that setting an adequate ‘time to respond’ works for alot of our customers. As long as they know their emails are being received and a response with a timeframe comes back, they are generally happy.
@JRL – Very nice! I’m jealous. And my wife isn’t allow to complain about email in bed because her iPhone is on the nightstand next to her. She’s a Tetris junkie.