Quit Checking Your Email

It’s been 5 days since I’ve stopped obsessively checking my email. I’m part way through listening to the audio book of Deep Work by Cal Newport and it’s felt important to abandon my constant email checking. I’ve started a task that I’ve been putting off for over a year of reading through the transcriptions of my journals, a 500 page task that I’m already 130 pages into in the last two days thanks to not checking my email throughout the day.

I’d already been on the downward taper of email checking, but have banned myself to once or less times per day when I an devote some actual time to answering and clearing out my inbox instead of constantly pulling down to refresh and seeing if anything new has come in. It’s been amazing.

I’m currently in the middle of reading the aforementioned document and cooking, I went to the other room and was so ready to return to my task at hand even though I’m technically distracted waiting for the oven to buzz. What I’m not is distracted by the digital world, I may have some pressing new emails, but I’ve looked at all the emails I get to look at for the day and it’s been amazing.

I am still in awe, bad awe, at how much time doing little things like checking emails or facebook messages can pull out of a day. So here I am, taking my day back by storm.