Before bathroom, before toothbrushing, or breakfast, you check your e-mail. Your family and friends are pleading with you to cease sitting in front of the screen. Seem familiar? It's not hard to get involved in E mail addiction, as it operates on the system of random reward. Dog trainers know the fastest way to change a dog's habits is to reward him appropraiately for the sought after changes.
We check our inbox for a reward: a communication from a loved one, a critical answer to a tech question, a random surprise that can improve our day. Sounds totally reasonable. And it is. Yet the very structure of how we receive these communications reinforces the intermittent reward system and plugs right into our animal brain. We page through piles of useless E-mail looking for that gold nugget.
Here are 5 simple tricks to help you if you fear you are an E mail addict. The idea is to get the process of stimulus/random reward interrupted.
1. Identify the extent of your habit. How much time do you spend in front of your Email? How much time reading through what is essentially junk and time wasters? It's critical to recognize and assess the actual impact it is having on your daily life.
2. Use features in your mail program like filters to automatically select out and remove from your attention any non-essential mail. Employ labels and folders to collect legitimate letters such as friends, family, business related, work associates. Then you will not be combing through junk to get to valid communications. I have several categories that bypass my inbox and go straight into the trash. This closes the gap between the "sometimes" rewards so your experiences become more predictable.
3. Set a realistic block of Email time, perhaps divided into 2 or more 15-45 minute daily sessions. Set an an alarm if you must, to be sure you do not go over the time. After awhile you will adjust the total time to meet the need.
4. Using your Email program features, figure out how to separate your letters into categories of "action needed" and "information". Attend to action needed E mail right away. Save your information E-mail to do all at once later.
5. Take back the phone! Handle everything you can by phone. Let your correspondents know you want to use E-mail to set phone appointments rather than electronically. Bring back the human contact this may be replacing in your life. That human contact is one of the needs that may be feeding the obsession with E mail.
6. Use a kind but determined hand with yourself during your transformation. Only check electronic correspondence during your scheduled times. If you have a big project with a deadline, close down your email for certain times to find out if you will accomplish more. Let others know you have decided not to let the demand of Email steal your day. For crucial matters, use the phone. Allow the sound of another human voice be your new reward.
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