I’ve got a great/controversial blog post for you, friend…
Trevor Mauch here with a question: What if you had to live without checking email for 30 days? I mean, 100%. Zero email. Not online. Not on your smartphone. You couldn’t check email at all. What would you do? Could you even do that with the way things are right now?
185
That’s a pretty accurate estimate of how many emails I get every day. And the funny thing is that’s a pretty low number compared to the number of emails other people I know get.
In fact, I was recently catching up on emails from the previous couple of days — I was in my Gmail account for about 3 hours straight… half of my workday. (I don’t usually work a full 8 hours. Sometimes less… sometimes much more if I’m working on something big.)
So, for me, being inside my email account feels unproductive and uncreative… and there are probably 139 other things I could think of that I’d rather do with my time (including running down main street naked with a siren strapped to my back!).
But, most of us treat email like a newborn baby treats milk. We think we gotta have it or the world will come crashing down around us.
So, before I share why I’m considering killing email, I want to say that I don’t think email is evil. It’s kinda like TV. It’s a great technology, it does a lot of good, but it’s also like crack — addictive — and can put you into a hypnotic-like state if you let it and destroy your creativity and results.
After I spent 3 hours camped inside my inbox “getting a bunch of stuff done,” I felt a sense of accomplishment when my inbox got below 10.
But!
The thing that I realized is that while my email count was down… I didn’t push forward anything truly worthwhile in my life or business during those 3 hours. 🙁
It was mainly maintenance and responding to other people trying to control my agenda.
Plus, right after that high of getting to “inbox zero” was gone, I knew I’d have the same issue 3 days later. It is a never-ending cycle… it feels kinda like a hamster wheel you know you will never get to the end of.
And it dawned on me, something has to be done. And I’m going to experiment with killing email — or at least part of it. Here’s why… and how.
7 Reasons to Kill Email
1) It’s highly unproductive, even though you feel like you’re being productive.
2) It’s a drain and sucks the life outta me being in my email longer than 30 minutes a day.
3) It’s a great way for other people to assert their own agenda on you.
4) It creates a dependency on “instant feedback” for you and others.
5) It’s a rabbit hole. It never ends, so your mind continually has it in percolating as something that has to
be done (creating a massive open loop).
6) It turns into a firehose of information that just keeps coming, distracting you from what’s really important in business and life.
7) People got along without email just fine for thousands of years… I’m sure we’ll get along just fine without it too.
When you really think about email for what it is, it’s about as important as having a Facebook account. Yes, it’s cool and can make communicating with people easier, but that’s half of the problem… too many people can too easily communicate with you whether you want it or not.
How to Live without Checking Email Yourself
Ok, here are some of my ideas on ways I’ll eliminate email by 95% as I embark on my quest over 90 days.
But, when I say kill email… I’m not saying delete my email accounts and live the life of a technology hermit. I’m just saying that I’m going to cut the time that I spend on email by 95%.
Here’s how…
1) I spent 20 minutes unsubscribing from every newsletter (except 2 that I really love and resonate with me) and turned off all email notifications from stuff like Facebook, Twitter/X, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
Everything.
That right there is 60% of my email. It’s now gone. Whew! It feels good already. I’ll keep doing this over the next month every time I get a newsletter in my inbox.
2) In my Gmail account, I’ve set up automatic filters for emails that I still need but that don’t need to be in my inbox. Things like receipts, emails about certain topics that I can have automatically filtered to my assistant or someone else, my Mastermind groups, etc.
I can just check out the folders once a month, and the stuff that’s really important will stand out.
3) Over the next 60 days, my assistant and I will be working on setting up systems and responses for common questions, systems for setting up phone appointments for important stuff with people, and she’ll be taking over the day-to-day monitoring of my email.
4) I’m transitioning everything over to Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, quick voice notes on WhatsApp or Signal and phone calls with appointments. AND training people that they can’t get a hold of me quickly by email… so if it’s actually important, they can give me a call.
So…
Should I kill email?
My decision is yes.
I probably won’t be able to kill email 100%… I’ll still check it a couple times a week. But I’ve made the decision that using email as a crutch to fill time and to fill my agenda has to stop.
It’ll open up a ton of time, creativity, and more personal interactions with the people who matter.
Now, I pose the question to you: Will you kill email with me?