Checking your emails all the time? Here’s how to reclaim your inbox

Checking your emails constantly feels like being responsible, but for most people it makes the working day more stressful and less productive. In one experiment, participants who were only allowed to check their emails three times a day reported lower stress levels than when they were allowed to check them at will. The solution is to check your emails in a few set blocks each day and to have a clear process for what’s genuinely urgent — so you don’t need to keep an eye on your inbox just to be on the safe side.

The inbox as a reflex

For many people, checking their emails is the first thing they do in the morning and the last thing they do in the evening, and in between, it’s a constant interruption. We often open our inbox without having received any messages at all, just to see if anything has come in. It’s the same checking reflex that makes us pick up our phone: a little thrill, a quick sense of relief, and a habit that builds with every check.

What’s more, every time we check costs us more than the few seconds it takes. You lose your train of thought, and it takes time to get back on track. Just how much such interruptions cost over the course of a working day is described in the article on interruptions at work.

What the experiments show

Kostadin Kushlev and Elizabeth Dunn had one group of adults spend a week where they were only allowed to check their emails three times a day, and another week where they could check them as often as they liked. During the week with fewer checks, the participants reported lower daily stress levels.

Gloria Mark and her colleagues went a step further and had a group of office workers work entirely without email for a few days. They switched between windows and tasks less frequently, stayed on one task at a time for longer, and showed lower stress levels as measured by physiological indicators.

Both studies are small-scale, and an email-free workplace is not something most people can implement. But the direction is clear: less frequent use is not worse, and it can be considerably more pleasant.

Three blocks a day

Choose two or three times a day when you read and reply to emails, for example after your first morning work session, after lunch and a little while before you go home. Between these blocks, keep your inbox closed.

Turn off email notifications – both on your computer and on your phone. A notification about a new email is an invitation to break the block, and most people will take it up.

Close the programme, not just the window. An email programme running in the background with a counter in the corner draws your attention even when you’re not looking.

Deal with each email once. When you do read it: reply straight away if it takes less than a couple of minutes; otherwise, add it to a list with a time slot for when you’ll deal with it. Reading the same email five times without taking any action is the most costly form of email.

How to make sure you don’t miss anything urgent

The fear of missing something important is what makes most people give up on email blocks. The solution is to ensure that anything that’s genuinely urgent doesn’t come via email.

Decide on an urgent channel. Tell your closest colleagues and your manager that anything that can’t wait should come via a phone call or a text message. Most things sent by email can wait a few hours, and everyone knows that.

Include this in your email signature or auto-reply. A line explaining when you check your emails and how to reach you in an emergency removes the expectation of a reply within minutes.

Be honest about your job. Some roles require a quick response — customer service, on-call duty, certain managerial roles. In those cases, the blocks may be more frequent, or apply only to certain parts of the day. The aim isn’t to ignore your work, but to stop letting your inbox dictate it.

Explain this to others

It might feel like you’re signalling that you care less. More often than not, the opposite is true: someone who responds thoughtfully twice a day is rarely perceived as less committed than someone who replies instantly but half-heartedly. Put it plainly: “I check my emails three times a day so I can get on with what I’m actually supposed to be doing. Ring me if it’s urgent.”

The same logic applies to meetings — where your phone and inbox are often open alongside the conversation, as described in the article on mobile phones in meetings. And the full picture of how to structure your working day can be found in the guide on focus at work.

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Zenith Protocol is a 30-day impulse control programme that trains your control reflex — whether it leads to a state of flow or to your inbox. It’s free to get started.