Co-existing with email
Tips for radical inbox declutter
Hi there,
Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimized by your email inbox? *Raises hand* Taking my own advice, I paid attention to what part of my digital life was causing me the most stress, and email was the number one offender: I did what I had to do.
Five things to share:
After years of despair and slight email-ptsd, I radically decluttered my email and online accounts to minimize digital overwhelm. For years, I felt obligated to process every message that arrived in my inbox, but what I failed to realize was that I can choose to not deal with most of it at all. It has been very liberating.
I’m on the last chapter of Adam Alter’s book Irresistible: Why you are addicted to technology and how to set yourself free. Irresistible explores the various famous psychological studies to illustrate how technology hooks us and what we can do about it. There is also a lot of stuff on video game addiction and how technology uniquely affects children and teenagers.
I watched How to Achieve Inbox Zero, 4 Email Productivity Hacks by Thomas Frank. Some of his advice include, do not use your email inbox as a task manager, dedicate a specific time of the day for email processing, and delete emails that don't require any action from you.
A quote I want to share with you:
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
— Herbert A. SimonNir Eyal is well known for writing the famous guidebook for designing technology people won’t be able to put down. Then, he wrote another guidebook for controlling our technology addiction. Ah, well. In Email Habits: How to Use Psychology to Regain Control, Eyal shares with us how he is tackling his email problem using what he knows about the psychology of habits.
That is all for this week!
Thank you for reading, and please share with anyone you think may benefit.
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Until next time,
Mehret