Impulse

I had no idea how addicted I was to email until I tried to quit. I was happy in my eLife until I ran across two arti­cles in as many days about how peo­ple let email run their lives. The NPR pro­gram was amus­ing, and the 43 Folders post was pru­dent as always. All very inter­est­ing, but these folks weren’t describ­ing me. Oh no, I wasn’t an email junkie. Boy was I wrong.

I decided to give email absti­nence a try. I went beyond the 43 fold­ers rec­om­men­da­tion of sim­ply turn­ing off auto-check: I closed my email app. That’s right, exited the pro­gram. My screen was empty; my com­puter quiet. I had never really seen my desk­top before (I chose that color??). That’s when I had my first real­iza­tion: email is just an appli­ca­tion — just a pro­gram like pho­to­shop, word, and soli­taire. I can start it and stop it when­ever I want.
That thought hadn’t occurred to me in decades. With every other app, I’d start it, use it, and quit. Not so with mail. Even back in col­lege I’d steal an adja­cent, unused vt320 to leave mail run­ning. The thought that I could close mail and then focus only on the task at hand was bril­liant. Profound. Empowering, even. So, I resolved to use my email app (out­look express, nowa­days) only when I’m “doing email.“
That’s when the crav­ings started: Like a for­mer smoker uncon­sciously fum­bling for a cig­a­rette then being sur­prised by it’s absence, I found myself con­stantly try­ing to check mail. Whenever my brain was idle, I’d alt-tab over to mail — but it wasn’t there. Whenever I’d fin­ish some­thing in my house, I’d wan­der over to check my mail — but it wasn’t there. I real­ized that it had become my habit to fill my idle time with email; check­ing in the hopes that some­thing mag­i­cally divert­ing would have arrived, or some­thing incred­i­bly urgent to attend to, or sim­ply check­ing to see what I needed to do next, my inbox hav­ing become my to-do list. I needed to check con­stantly — who knew what I might have missed in the last 3 min­utes since my pre­vi­ous check???
The first step to recov­ery is admit­ting you have a prob­lem. Without detec­tion nor inten­tion, I, the Commander of my own Destiny, had slipped into let­ting my life be ruled by email: I took its advice on choos­ing my tasks. I relied on it for con­tact with other humans. I allowed it to fill all my free time. I found com­fort in its pres­ence.
So, I invite you to join me in this exper­i­ment and try the fol­low­ing (in addi­tion to the good rec­om­men­da­tions on 43 Folders):

• Run email only to “do email”. Hit the close but­ton. Right now. You can do it. You’ve taken your first step into a larger world.
• Use all them “send mes­sage” but­tons in other apps. Related to the above, if you’re surf­ing and want to tell some­one about some­thing you found, don’t run your email app, use your browsers Send Message but­ton. Just about every app has one now. This will save you from the temp­ta­tions of your inbox.
• Keep your to do list out­side of mail. There are lots of pro­grams out there for this sort of thing. Me, I keep things sim­ple: notepad, for win­dows; vi for unix.
• Become an IM lurker: IMs are even more dis­tract­ing than a new mail bong because some­one you care about is wait­ing for you at the other end. Most IM apps have a “be online but appear off” set­ting. Use this when­ever you’re work­ing and go online for real only when you’re in a social, dis­tractible mode — like when you’re “doing email”. Yeah, it’s not k001, but nei­ther is bug­ging me when I’m writ­ing the grand finale to a story.
• Let the answer­ing machine get it. Same verse, older song.

I’d love to hear how it goes for you (or any other opin­ions for that mat­ter). Good luck, and may the force be with you.