The Stress of The Internet: And 6 Steps to Slow Down Email
Today, there are 3.4 billion smartphone subscriptions around the world, a figure expected to rise up to 6.1 billion within the next four years. This fact, together with big tech companies’ plans to spread the Internet to unwired regions of the planet, is making us more connected than ever before. (At least, more connected in technological terms.)
As we embrace the ubiquity of the Internet, and bring it with us wherever we go, we start cultivating a habit: we expect notifications on any occasion, generating an urge to constantly check our devices for incoming content. A habit which psychologists warn, in the case of email, to be a “toxic source of stress.”
Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, believes that technology and constant connectivity don’t make us more productive. She compares our relationship with smart devices with the one we have with food: “we are not gonna get rid of food, we need to be on a healthy diet with food, and that is the goal, being on a healthy diet with these technologies,” accepting our devices as “life partners” that aren’t going away.
Being email one of the most-used communication technologies, together with instant messaging services and social media, it seems obvious that, to many, going cold turkey with email is not a feasible option. Instead, as professor Turkle states, the goal should be a “healthier” relationship with electronic mail.
If you feel there is room to improve the way you interact with it, here are six simple steps to slow down email:
- Process Email in Batches. (I do it twice a day.)
- Check Each Email Once. (Embrace inbox zero, process emails as-you-go, and don’t let them stagnate in your inbox — as you will have to process them again in the future. Every time you process an email, archive it or delete it, but don’t let it sit in there.)
- Unsubscribe From Everything. (Unroll.me can help with that. Alright, you might not want to unsubscribe from every single newsletter, but ten seconds to unsubscribe from useless mailing lists can save a lot of time in the future.)
- Send Attachments Through File-sharing Services. (Such as WeTransfer, Dropbox, or the like.)
- Don’t Reply [Unless Vital]. (When emails don’t need a reply, replies only bring more emails to your inbox.)
- Don’t Use Your Email as a To-do List. (If an email requires you to perform an action which takes less than two minutes, do it now. Otherwise, transfer the task you need to accomplish to another system you check more often than email.)
Your smart devices aren’t going away. And neither is e-mail. But that’s okay, because these tools are there to serve you. The question is, how can we become smarter users of these technologies? The tips above are a start. But it’s really a question each of us must answer for ourselves.
If you liked this piece, join us in a journey to simplicity.
And receive future essays directly in your email.
Originally published at gettingsimple.com on March 2, 2016.
