time spent offline

Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimized by an overflowing, cluttered, anxiety-inducing inbox! It’s not you. And, it’s not me. It’s the attention economy.

Email, an abbreviation of “electronic mail,” was invented in the early 1970s by Ray Tomlinson as a personal side project. Since the first email sent by Tomlinson in 1971, email has ushered in an incredible new era of communication we now enjoy; with billions of people all over the world sending and receiving emails every day. What Tomlinson surely did not anticipate back then was how ubiquitous, addictive and compulsive email would eventually become for its users. Tomlinson later said he had no notion whatsoever of what the ultimate impact email would have. How did an invention meant to serve as a speedy way for programmers and researchers to keep in touch, particularly for those who can’t be relied on to answer their phones, become a nuance to our daily lives?

The average full-time worker in America receives 120 messages per day, and spends around 2.6 hours reading and answering emails. And, on average, professionals check their email 15 times per day, or every 37 minutes. Why do we feel such urge to check our email so compulsively, yet so unnecessarily? The hook model, as described in Nir Eyal’s book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, can explain part of what makes email devilishly addictive. According to Eyal, companies are increasingly using a new, stronger habit-forming mechanism to hook users called the Hook Model, a variable of rewards used to grab our attention, provide us pleasure, and infatuate our minds. Variable rewards are rewards we receive randomly and without a fixed pattern, and are “a powerful inducement to creating compulsions.” Variable rewards come in three types and involve the persistent pursuit of rewards of the tribe, rewards of the hunt, and rewards of the self.

• Rewards of the tribe: Humans have evolved as species because of our ability to co-exist in larger groups and create tribes. Thus, our brain is hardwired to seek out rewards that make us feel accepted, important, attractive, and included. Email, like all social media sites, provides us with powerful social rewards and social validation, but on a variable schedule, creating the desire to check it compulsively to see who messaged us, if our boss has responded back to our pitch yet, and so forth.
• Rewards of the hunt: While belonging to a tribe is a powerful basic need, our individual need for sustenance is even more crucial. We are hardwired to acquire food and other resources needed for our survival. “But where we once hunted for food, today we hunt for deals and information.”^[3] We are hardwired to check if we have received an email about a potential business opportunity.
• Rewards of the self: Us humans seek variable rewards that stimulate our senses for personal gratification. “Babies put everything in their mouths for the same reason there are flashing neon lights in Las Vegas. We love novel sensory stimulation.”^[3] We also seek mastery of the world around us, with the desire to control, dominate, and complete challenges around us. Our email seems to call for us to complete the task of removing the unopened item notification in a sort of challenge to gain control over it.

Is it any wonder then that most of us feel overwhelmed with our inbox, anxiously checking and re-checking for new notifications, while wasting precious time on processing emails? The good news is, there is still hope for cultivating a healthier co-existence with our inboxes.

1. Turn off email notifications

How strange would it be if the mailman was to run up to you all day long and hand you mails asking you to take a look at it right away? Pretty strange, but that is exactly what is happening with email notifications. Notifications interrupt us, costing us valuable time and reducing our cognitive ability to focus on important tasks. And, how many of the emails we get on a daily basis are actually important and urgent? Not many. So, why do we allow them to demand our attention whenever a notification pops up? The first thing to say is, “no thank you.” Turn off notifications and schedule dedicated time to check email.

2. Unsubscribe

62% of all emails we receive is not important. Yet, these emails overflow our digital space and create unnecessary mind-clutter without adding much value to our lives. Processing irrelevant emails individually also wastes our precious time and attention.

Unsubscribing from newsletters you no longer, or rarely, open is a great way to reduce inbox clutter. Next time a subscription email arrives in your inbox, ask yourself the following questions: Is this newsletter/subscription useful? Does this newsletter/subscription add value to my life? Would I miss it if I never got another email from this newsletter/subscription? If you answer “no” to any of these questions, it might be time to unsubscribe. It is very empowering to be selective of who gets access to our inbox. It is important to view our inbox as a sacred space for emails that bring value to our lives. Set some time aside to declutter and organize your emails to enjoy the benefits of a well-curated digital subscription list. Remember: You can always subscribe back to newsletters and subscriptions you miss.

3. Try inbox-zero

If you were to have hundreds of pages of paper emails piled up on your desk, waiting for your attention, you would feel overwhelmed;. But because email clutter lives on in the digital space, we believe it doesn’t have the same impact on our brain. However, it is taking the same mental and psychological toll as it were paper clutter. I suffer from email anxiety and that means I always have unread emails I am ignoring responding to, or processing, to get it to unread or deleted zones, and reaching Inbox Zero.

Although I struggle to keep my unread emails to zero, I have implemented a rule I find useful for reducing my inbox clutter: I should keep my unread emails to 10 or less at any given time. It is an arbitrary number but I feel things are under control when I maintain 10 or less unread emails in my inbox. When it passes the 20 mark, I know it’s time for another inbox declutter. Set some time aside every day, week, or month to declutter and organize your inbox. It doesn’t have to be Inbox Zero but it is a good feeling to feel on top of your emails. We all deserve a clear inbox space.

4. Create folders

The simplest way to organize your email is to set up folders for various categories of information in a similar way you do for your paper files. You can create folders for various subjects or people or types of messages and archive them accordingly.

I am an email junkie, and tend to hold onto emails forever. Having specific folders means those emails can live in a specific folder without cluttering my inbox, but I don’t feel anxious about deleting emails I want to keep. To keep things simple, I have two folders organized by the year. Receipts, bills, online orders, etc. go in the “Personal 2020” folder, and anything related to my newsletter/blog goes into “Business 2020″ folder. If things don’t fit into neither category, I can delete them without feeling guilty. I do the same for work emails too, with no more than four folders to organize my inbox. The search function is excellent for finding specific emails, which means I don’t need to be super specific with the folders I create. Having too many folders can become counter-productive by creating its own unnecessary clutter.

5. Set boundaries

Boundaries help us thrive. They help us focus on what is important to us and the things we value. Our email is a space that is difficult to set boundaries with because there are so many people, things, and information vying for our attention in that space. It is important to know what boundaries you need to set for a clutter-free inbox, and set those boundaries and keep enforcing them.

Inbox When Ready is a Chrome extension that batch process your email on a regular schedule and minimize the total time you spend in your inbox. It is a great tool to create boundaries to improve your inbox flow and reduce stress and increase focus. Boundaries can be either physical or mental and are very unique to each individual- What do you need to feel in control of your attention when dealing with email? For instance, can you commit to not checking your work email when you are not at work? I log off work email every Friday at 5:00pm, pack away my work devices and don’t even think about work email until 9:00am Monday morning.