How do I stop checking my email every five minutes?
You don't need more willpower: you need to decide when to read, and let your email wait. Four practical habits and what Focus mode does.
You open your email “just for a second”, reply to two messages, and when you go back to what you were doing you can’t remember where you’d got to. It isn’t a lack of discipline. It’s how a classic email program works: every new message demands your attention right away.
Why do I keep checking my email all the time?
Because the program decides for you. Every notification is a small nudge, and your brain learns to respond to the nudge. The more notifications you get, the more often you check, even when nothing has arrived.
There’s a less obvious reason too: your inbox mixes everything together. The message from your key customer sits next to the automatic receipt and the newsletter. Since you don’t know what you’ll find, you check everything, all the time.
Do email interruptions really make me work worse?
They make you work faster, and worse for you. A study by Gloria Mark and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, presented at the CHI conference in 2008, observed people doing a task with and without interruptions. Those who were interrupted finished the work in less time and to the same quality, but reported more stress, more frustration, more time pressure and more effort.
In other words: interruptions don’t show up in the result. You pay for them in the evening.
How do I take back control of my email?
With four habits, from the easiest to the most effective:
- Pick two or three set times to read your email: first thing, after lunch, before finishing. Outside those times, the program stays closed.
- Turn off notifications, all except those from the people who really matter: the owner, your main customers, whoever covers for you.
- Separate people from machines. Receipts, automatic alerts and newsletters can go into separate folders, to look at once a day.
- Work in blocks. Forty or fifty minutes on one thing, then a short break. During the block, your email waits.
The third and fourth are the hardest to keep up by hand: they take rules, filters and discipline every day. That’s exactly the work an email program should do for you.
What does Akomodix Focus mode do?
It does those four things on its own. In the Akomodix apps, on your phone and on your computer:
- One switch, work blocks and breaks. During a block only VIPs and replies in ongoing conversations notify at once; the rest arrives at the end of the block.
- It turns on with one tap, and on your phone from quick settings too. No counters and no streaks to keep alive: you decide.
- Your mail sorts itself into People, Automatic and Newsletters: when you open the app, you see first who actually wrote to you.
- On your phone, the Calendar opens on the Now view, meaning what is happening now and what comes next, and tasks with a date appear next to your appointments.
What can you do from tomorrow?
Choose your three email times and put them in your calendar as appointments with yourself. Then open your phone settings and turn off email notifications, leaving only your important contacts. It takes five minutes, and for the rest of the day you set the agenda.
If you’d like to work this way across your whole company, with tools that do it for you, write to us: we’ll show you how our apps work, and what you need to get started.
Frequently asked questions on this topic
If I don't reply to customers straight away, won't I lose them?
Hardly ever. Most emails aren't urgent, and people with a real emergency usually phone. The real risk is not being able to tell the few urgent messages from the rest. That's why it makes sense to always let important people through, such as your main customers or the owner, and let everything else wait for an hour.
How often should I check my email?
It depends on your job, but for many people three times a day is enough: first thing, after lunch and before finishing. If you deal with customers directly, you might check once an hour. What matters is that you choose the times, and that your email doesn't interrupt you in between.
What is Focus mode in an email app?
It's a switch that, for a length of time you choose, holds back non-urgent messages and lets through only those from the people on your VIP list. At the end of the block, everything is waiting for you, in order. In the Akomodix apps it works with work blocks and breaks; on your phone you can also turn it on with one tap from quick settings.