Email Moratorium
In the ineffective way that Michael Scott declared Bankruptcy on The Office[1], I do hereby declare a moratorium on emails. I think ten days would do it.
Let’s just go ten days without trying to sell each other anything, without asking anything of another, without doing or saying anything that requires a response. M’kay? Thanks.
I have a lot of email addresses, some of which I check more often than others. I have two main ones: one for my lawyer stuff, and one for my writing stuff. As an example, I’m writing this around noon on a Friday. My writing inbox, just from today, has sixteen new unread emails just on the ‘focused’ side, and I’ve already gone through it once this morning. Extrapolate that number, carry the two, and it adds up to forty bajillion emails a day. I’m not even looking at the lawyer inbox because I don’t want to start crying.
Emails are like hydras. You can’t simply deal with an email and have it be done with. A reply to an email engenders three more emails. I have friends who have a “zero inbox rule.” They swear they won’t leave the office until their inbox is down to zero. They either:
- Never leave the office;
- Have the kind of job like, I don’t know, fast food counter clerk, that doesn’t involve emails;
- Are wizards of some higher order; or
I used to have a rule that I would not go more than 24 hours without responding to an email. I’d like to think that I still have that rule. I do try to live by it, but I’m finding it increasingly impossible. Emails do get lost in my inbox. Many times I don’t even know they’re in there to reply to.
Honestly, if I spent all day every day simply responding to emails, I’d never finish responding to emails. I’m like Lucy and Ethel at the Chocolate Factory.[2] That conveyor belt just keeps getting faster and faster and faster.
It would help, I suppose, if I used my phone more. But my tremor[3] makes thumbtyping difficult. When I type on my phone I often bobble letters and spell words with numbers. Not very professional. Or readable.
Also? I don’t want to be on my phone all the time. If I’m out and about, I want to be out and about. I don’t want half my brain to be in my email inbox. I want to be at the museum, at the park, with my children or husband or friends.
Once upon a time in my memory we had to write letters and put stamps on them and wait a week for a reply.
Whatever it is? Hold your taters. It will keep.
[1] (68) I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!!! – The Office US – YouTube
[2] I Love Lucy | Lucy And Ethel At The Chocolate Factory (S2, E1) | Paramount+
[3] Essential tremor – Symptoms and causes – Mayo Clinic
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