People Suck at Email #9, Notifications

Turn off your email notifications.

Months ago I turned off all email notifications on my phone and years ago on desktop.

I haven’t looked back. Being interrupted by new email notifications gives email an undeserved sense of urgency. Email is not instant messaging, it’s not a phone call or a text message, it’s not an alarm bell or siren. Nothing bad is going to happen if you don’t read an email for 15 minutes or a few hours.

I highly recommend trying it out. Even though I don’t receive a huge amount of email, I feel like the amount of stress in my life has decreased by at least 33%.

Caveat: I no longer run system critical infrastructure of any sort. I realize these types of systems do actually send “alarm bell” type emails. IMHO this is an inappropriate and antiquated use of email. If I was responsible for these sorts of systems, I would first look for an app to replace the alert emails. If that was completely impossible, I suppose turning off notifications would not be an option.