A World Without Email — Year 3, Weeks 19 to 23 (Breaking the Email Addiction)

6 thoughts on “A World Without Email — Year 3, Weeks 19 to 23 (Breaking the Email Addiction)”

  1. Thanks very much Luis for your link to my article about Email being bad for your health. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but I found that the title helped to get people’s attention.

    1. Hi Frank! Thanks for the feedback and for dropping by! I actually think the title was right on, if you come to consider the kind of unnecessary stress we are all under when trying to work our way through huge inboxes everyday! Even to the point of no longer allowing us to enjoy a good and well deserved holiday break by constantly checking it in our mobile devices!

      So if you would want to associate stress and email under that context, I think the title of your article fits in quite nicely! Thanks for putting together that lovely set of tips, by the way! Good stuff!

  2. I remember when you started down this path. I am glad to see it is still working. As always, you challenge me – I have an inbox into which tons of things pour, many of which I delete before I look at them.

    Why do I not turn off the spouts? Because, I am afraid I will miss out on SOMEthing. In reality, my mind is so divided by all the pipes, I can’t think straight. I mean, who can really keep up with their Twitter feed once you have more than ten people you follow?

    So, down the rabbit hole again, prune the incoming info to what I want to see, and see if I can focus again.

    Cheers!

    1. Hi Don, thanks a bunch for dropping by and for the feedback comments, my friend! It’s interesting to see how you seem to be facing the very same “fear” I had myself when I first got started with this experiment. I, too, feared I would be missing out on stuff, but still I decided to go ahead and do it. And haven’t come back.

      Here is one example, I have unsubscribed from all kinds of newsletters for a while just to check how much I would miss the info contained in them; in reality, I found out I didn’t miss a single thing and the info that was really worth while and useful for me was already coming to me from other sources, i.e. more trusted sources, even.

      And when entering the social networking realm, I eventually learned to live by the flow of information; don’t try to pretend to read everything, because that’s impossible. Again, over time I learned that what I really needed to be aware of, no matter what!, it eventually came back to me in some other form or shape.

      I now let information find me and my social networks act, pretty much, as a powerful social collaborative filtering mechanism. I can live without email every day, for sure, but I am not sure I can no longer live without those social networks…

      That’s why there is no way back for me on this one, I am afraid 😉

  3. You have just become my personal hero. I work for a large company and litterally receive hundreds of e-mails every week. 25% of my time is spent picking through this stack. For the month September I plan on not sending a single e-mail. After that I might be as bold as to stop reading e-mails, but we’ll see about that (I’d also like to keep my job)

    Any advice? 🙂

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