Day 15
You’ve got mail (but when will you actually read it?)
The Advent Cal(m)endar contains habits to increase clarity, focus and calmness. Every second day, I open a door and post about my experiences.
Hi readers! If you look at the habits so far, you can probably see some patterns emerging – and they of course reflect where I need an accountability system! There aren’t (and, spoiler alert, there won’t be) any habits about enjoying nature: Being outdoors is the one thing I do not skip, no matter how busy I am. On the other hand, my chosen habits show that I struggle with making time for pretty standard healthy, mindful activities like meditation and exercise. I have been doing these activities irregularly for years, but I easily stop when I am stressed – exactly when they would be most helpful. A second recurring theme is reducing screen time and the flood of disconnected bits of online information. Today, we have another habit in that direction:
Read emails only 3x per day
The good old days again…
As I have written before, I remember the days without the internet or even without a computer. When I was a teenager, we did have both at home – but in the form of a shared family PC I could use for two to three hours per day at most. I had one single friend who was a computer nerd and also had email access, and we would email each other (from our respective family email accounts!), mostly just joking around and discussing everyday events at school.
I still remember sitting at the large wooden desk in the living room, enjoying having the computer and the room to myself for half an hour, and the excitement when a new email popped up. It seemed like such a miracle that it was possible to send texts from one computer to another! Back then, email did not feel messy or overwhelming – our family account received only a handful of messages per day. In fact, email somehow felt neat and clear because it was typed text instead of the handwritten notes and verbal communication my friend and I would usually rely on.
The email situation in 2024
Almost thirty years later, things are very different. I get dozens of emails every day for work. Of course, I have my own laptop; my email software is open almost all day; notifications alert me every few minutes that a new message has arrived. Whatever I’m doing, when an email appears I switch to it immediately, getting distracted and feeling my stress level increase, feeling like I am never left in peace.
There is just one thing that hasn’t changed: The little rush of excitement when an email arrives. It certainly isn’t as strong as when email was a new thing – but it is still there every single time, even though, with a high probability, the message will be an invitation to an event completely irrelevant to me or information about one more admin task to do. I often feel “proud” that I am not addicted to social media, but the truth is: Email works in a similar way for me. It (temporarily) satisfies the craving for new information, and like “likes” on social media, it seemingly demonstrates that I am valued by other people (because otherwise they wouldn’t get in touch with me, right?).
Of course, constantly checking emails is a bad habit. I cannot use my work as an excuse – nobody will complain if I don’t respond within a day or two. In fact, when I noticed that emails were becoming an issue for me, I stopped opening my email account before lunchtime, and nobody even noticed. Each morning, I just had my tea and focused completely on a single work task for several hours. I was definitely less distracted and much more productive then – it was great. But somehow, I dropped this habit when I started having more early meetings, which disrupted my mornings and often required reading emails for preparation.
Time for a change
So, it’s time to get things under control again! The plan is to check my emails once in the morning, lunchtime, and evening, and to respond in batches rather than throughout the day. If you struggle with email too, here are two additional little tips I can recommend:
If you are like me and flag any vaguely interesting email for follow-up until hundreds of them pile up, just mercilessly remove the ones you know you will never really follow up on. I did this at the start of this month (in the spirit of becoming a new person), and it felt like a weight was lifted!
Unsubscribe from all the random newsletters you don’t usually read anyway (not from mine, OK!?!). Maybe this one is obvious, but it’s easy to underestimate the difference it can make.
Are you an email addict too? I hope you are having a calm, email-free Sunday!
Hannah