Eliminating email
Declaring email bankruptcy is a little extreme but I had to do something. This trip back to NYC I realized that much of my productive time was interrupted by email checking. When I’m working hard I’m usually pounding the pavement. So I check email rarely but manage to get more done.
I decided to implement a policy, only checking my email twice daily and setting up a autoresponder that notifies senders. This isn’t actually my idea. I got it from The 4-hour work week, a book that starts off strong but left me expecting more at the end. Regardless it was great for getting me to implement better habits.
Realizing that I would be autoresponding to all of my incoming email I spent two hours looking at the mail I received.
- Subscribed to about ten mailing lists.
- Only read one mailing list regularly
I unsubscribed from all of them and the one I did read occasionally I set to send me a compiled list of all emails once a week. I deleted all the mail from the mailing list. None of which I read.
Next I looked at all of the mailing list I didn’t remember subscribing to (spam):
- NWA sending me notifications about potential discounts that I have never used, UNSUBSCRIBE.
- Email from the sports auction company I used in 1999? UNSUBSCRIBE.
- Email from that online music company I bought a CD from in 1998? UNSUBSCRIBE!
Yes, I was receiving email from the same company since 1998 that I never read. Why didn’t I ever think about unsubscribing before? I guess gravity prevented action.
In the end I realized I don’t actually get many personal emails. There is no reason to bankrupt my perfectly functioning email. Now that I’ve unsubscribed from nearly everything I don’t read, the only email I do get should be from people I do want to respond to. I just hope they don’t mind waiting for my next response cycle.
- Total number of emails eliminated using this method? 7,000+
My goal this month is to eliminate task and activites that don’t actually make me more productive or my life easier. Constantly checking email was #1.
July 9th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
This is a great inspiration to do the same in my life, thanks.
I can’t find the reference, but I came across an article sometime last year about a company that implemented a policy of eliminating internal email. It was in an effort to increase productivity and encourage better relationship building. I think they were a telecom company of some sort.