Email twice. Four months later
It’s been just over four months since I posted about my experiment, Email. Twice daily. No more, no less. where I shared my plans to restrict myself to checking email only twice a day at designated times. In the post, I had hinted at sharing my lessons months later. So, it’s time to throw my dirty laundry in the street and expose myself.
First off.. the brutal truth. It’s really fucking hard to maintain this. Habits are nearly as hard to make as they are to break. I suspect that I honor my rule 2-3 days each week and it’s completely inconsistent the remainder. Usually, I find myself looking at email at 8:30am and have to slap myself and yell, “what are you doing?!!?”
Guilt sinks in and I hit ⌘-q. Problem solved… for a little while.
So, what has lead to this. Well, one of the biggest hurdles has been that one of our largest clients is now focused more in the United Kingdom. Luckily, I’m an early-morning person, but this means that my 10am PDT rule wouldn’t have me checking for their precious emails until 6pm GMT their time. Not exactly acceptable. So, I’ve been more flexible in the mornings and responding to emails as early as 5-6am PDT. However, I realize that I’m cheating myself of previous focus time and need to recalibrate my email windows.
Given these new constraints, I’m now trying 8:30am and 2:30pm as my primary email times.
I’m curious how this has been working out for you…
