I recently talked with a friend about email overload, and he made an interesting point. He said it’s no so much that he’s overwhelmed by junk in his inbox – it’s that he wastes so much time constantly checking it, even when there isn’t anything new there.
I hadn’t thought about this, but it’s true – most people I know don’t need to check their email 50 times a day – they could get away with checking it twice a day without any real issues (heck they could probably miss a day or two), but they have an urge to continuously check for new email.
In this article I’ll discuss some of the reasons we constantly check out email, and along with each one propose a solution.
(By the way, if you do need to check email every 20 minutes just to keep up, you may want to read one of my previous articles: Strategies for Dealing With Email Overload – How To Get To And Maintain Inbox Zero)
Why Do We Constantly Check Email – And How Can We Stop?
Reason #1: My Inbox Is My Todo List
We know this is wrong, bu we do it anyway: store emails in our inbox to remind us of something we have to do, someone we have to follow up with. So of course we check our email constantly – not to see what’s new, but to see what we have to do next.
Solution: Get A Proper Task List. We all know the solution to this issue, it’s just a matter of implementing it. If you don’t like task list software just use a text file. The point is just to get away from checking your email constantly to see what else needs to be done today – because then you risk getting sidetracked by new emails that may have come in (and likely aren’t that urgent or important).
Reason #2: That’s Where All My Documents Are
We’re been spoiled by GMail and other free email providers. In the past, with limited email storage, we’d regularly clean out our inbox and move documents to where they belong. Now, many of us just use our inbox as our default file storage. At last count I had some 7 GB of free space in my email account – plenty of room for all my different documents, images etc. If you use your email account as a personal file server and regularly need access to documents stored there, you’ll constantly be breaking your workflow logging in and searching for items you need. Worse, you risk being distracted by new email as well.
Solution: Use a Proper Filing System. I used to email myself files all the time – and I still will occasionally if I need to move a file to someone else computer (more likely, I’ll email it to them). Lately however I’ve been using Foldershare and Dropbox. They work great for keeping my files synchronized across my computers, and you can use it to synchronize across your work computers as well (though I would first check with your IT department to make sure they are ok with it). When someone emails me a new document, one of my first thoughts is “Ok, where can I file this?” In some cases, just saving the email is appropriate for archiving – but if it’s a document I am going to be referring to a lot, I’ll download it into a folder for the project I’m working on.
Reason #3: We (Occasionally) Get Time Sensitive Emails.
Most of us don’t get emails every day that require an immediate response – but sometimes, we are waiting for one particular email, or we remember a time months ago when someone urgently needed a response. This leads to us anxiously check email constantly to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Solution#1: Explain The Situation. One easy solution that I’ve started implementing is instructing my colleagues to either text or call me to confirm I’ve received their email. When I email them, I explain that I don’t check email frequently, and if they want to make sure I get back to them promptly, it is up to them to call or text me if an urgent reply is needed. You can bet that when it is important to them, they work hard to get me on the phone and verify that I’m on top of it. Most items are not urgent, and can wait an extra day until I have time to deal with them.
Solution #2: Set A Day To Follow Up. One of my favorite personal development books, Getting Things Done advocates the use of a “@Waiting” list – items that you are waiting on other people for. I love this list and use it constantly. I shoot someone an email, decide when I’ll follow up with them, and throw it on the @Waiting list. If they don’t get back to me by the appropriate time, I follow up via email, in phone or in person – whatever is appropriate. I often will mention the specific day and time I’ll follow up in emails I send now – and like magic, I get responses before the designated time. Since I know it’s on the list and I won’t lose track of it, I can stop thinking about that particular email, stop checking for it to come in – and focus on my other tasks.
Reason #4: We Are Biologically Hard Wired To Seek Out New Information.
I alluded to this briefly in my article about how to quickly read articles online. As Dr. Irving Biederman explained to the Wall Street Journal, our brains are wired such that new information gives us a small natural high:
“[C]oming across [...] new and richly interpretable information triggers a chemical reaction that makes us feel good, which in turn causes us to seek out even more of it. The reverse is true as well: We want to avoid not getting those hits because, for one, we are so averse to boredom.
It is something we seem hard-wired to do, says Dr. Biederman. When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those.”
Sounds to me like plain old fashioned boredom.
Solution: Find Something Else To Do. Oftentimes if we’re checking email with no real purpose it means we’re bored (or procrastinating) – and looking for that “opioid hit.” Go for a walk, wash the dishes, clean your room – just don’t check email as a way of killing time. Focus on checking email when you want to, not when you can’t think of anything better to do, and you’ll find yourself less dependent on it.
Reason #5: We’re Psychologically Dependent On Email Due To Variable Reinforcement
When we check our email there are a number of unknowns that could potentially give us positive reinforcement. These unknowns include:
- Whether we actually have any new email
- Whether any particular piece of new mail is “good” (good news, new information, something we can act on, etc)
- How “good” any individual new email is.
Because “good” emails come at random intervals I would argue we are psychologically dependent on email for positive reinforcement. Similar to gamblers at slot machines, we check email constantly due to the variable ratio schedule of reinforcement – we never know when the big “payday” is coming. Loosely translated, this means that we check emails more frequently, and will give up on it far less easily, because the results come sporadically and randomly.
For those interested in more detail, Jeff Atwood also recently wrote an article going into some depth about this issue Email – The Variable Reinforcement Machine:
“We’re so ecstatic to get that single useful email out of hundreds that we can’t keep ourselves from compulsively pressing the new email lever over and over and over, hoping it will happen again soon, like the caged rats in Skinners’ experiments.”
Note: Before I discuss solutions I want to point out I am not a doctor, and if you have an internet addiction and cannot stop yourself from going online, you may want to seek professional help.
Solution #1: Recognize And Break Your Psychological Dependence. Just understanding that we check email because it psychologically rewards us is the first step. Following from that, before you check email ask yourself – “Is this a good time to be checking email? Is there something else I should be doing? Am I checking email because it is the right thing to do – or because I have some psychological longing to check it?.”
Solution #2: Self Reward and Self Punish. Another way to break your dependence is to give yourself rewards for not checking email – and punish yourself when you do. For example, when I was trying to check email less often, I told myself that if I checked my email when I wasn’t supposed to, I had to go to my Google Reader and “mark all as read” and unstar everything I was saving to read later (essentially missing out on all the new articles that were there). I only slipped up a couple of times, and quickly learned my lesson. Another trick I used was only letting myself listen to music or podcasts while working out if I hadn’t slipped up and checked when I wasn’t supposed to – an easy way to reward myself for good behavior, and punish myself for bad behavior.
If you enjoy discussion about how we are controlled by our responses to external stimuli, you may enjoy one of my previous articles on the subject of dopamine and pleasure.
Reason #6: It’s My Home Page/It’s Always Open.
If the first thing you see when you sit down at your computer is Yahoo, or MSN, or what have you – of course you’ll constantly check it.
Solution #1: Close The Browser. Or, if you are like me and have two monitors, move all the junk (open email windows, chat windows, etc) over to a second monitor – and then turn it off. Just having that extra step (having to open a new browser, or turn on the monitor) gives me enough time to catch myself, and ask myself whether I should be checking email right now – or doing something else.
Solution #2: Set A New Home Page. Pick something that reminds you of your purpose and why you’re sitting at the computer in the first place. I like using my start pages. You may prefer to set your home page to one of those start pages, or perhaps your online calendar. Find out what works for you – just move it off your inbox!
Reason #7: We Just Do – Out Of Habit
If you’re like me (and likely many other people), you check email out of habit. Specifically, checking email for me was a trigger driven habit – and it’s possible you have email triggers too: when you wake up, when you get home from school, when you finish work, after you shower, etc.
Solution #1: Replace Checking Email With New Actions. To break this habit, all you have to do is have a set action (or multiple actions) to do immediately after one of those triggers. For example, you may decide that as soon as you wake up, you are going to walk to the kitchen and drink a class of water. You will then ask yourself what you need to do next, and then once you know – you can do that instead of checking email
Drinking water is one of my favorites, because I generally don’t waste a lot of my time in the kitchen – and I actively dislike going there, since I don’t like cooking or doing dishes. If this doesn’t work for you, you could pick something else. They key is it can’t be too unpleasant or you won’t do it.
My Closing Thoughts – And Your Thoughts?
As I discussed in my article about how to stop wasting time online, you can certainly take extreme measures such as blocking websites, but I don’t think that’s necessary. These are some of the common reasons I (and some of my friends) check email constantly. I’m interested in your feedback as well: What do you think? Are there other reasons you constantly check email that I’ve missed?
Do you have any suggestions for how people can stop checking their email so frequently – or do you recognize things about yourself in this list that perhaps you may want to change?
Enjoy this article? You should Tweet This and share it with your friends, or feel free to share it however you like using this shortened link: http://tr.im/stopemail
Further Reading:
- How To Actively Take Control of Your Time and Your Life
- Procrastination Thumbscrews – Know Your Procrastinating and Time Wasting Weaknesses
- Stop Wasting Time Online! Tips and Start Pages To Improve Concentration Online
- Strategies for Dealing With Email Overload – How To Get To And Maintain Inbox Zero
- How to Effectively Read 12,853 Articles, Forum Topics & Blog Posts a Week
Favorites This Week:
- The Key To Making Wise Decisions over at Advanced Life Skills
- Luciano’s Productivity Principles over at Litemind
- Free Ebook: More For Your Money over at Aliventures
- Why To Do Lists Don’t Work over at Find Me Fit
And don’t forget – I share many other articles like these via Twitter and StumbleUpon – I only share a portion here, since I come across so many interesting things every week. You should definitely follow me on Twitter if you want more.
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