What I've gained by giving up my inbox

Ten years of carrying a cell phone hooked up constantly to a magical envelope holding messages inside finally got to me. I felt stuffed, just like that envelope. I realized while I was away in Lake Austin last year that I had grown completely addicted to mindlessly hitting the app icon and checking to see if anything new had come in. What's the problem of the hour? What's the comment that has been added? What has been forwarded? "Liked"? What new opportunity does someone want to tell me about? What meeting needs to be scheduled? Rescheduled? How about a meeting to talk about a meeting?

I now check my inbox twice a day. Yes, I said it. Two times. Each day. That's it. Now, I recognize that in some positions in a company, that wouldn't be possible. There are client service professionals in my own company, for example, who couldn't do this. But I have been working hard to match my daily tasks with my role as treetree's CEO as it has evolved, and when it hit me that I could stop hitting that envelope so incessantly, I made some major adjustments. And I haven't looked back. Here's how I did it:

I worked closely with my Administrative Director, Susan, to learn some best practices. She helped me research the best way to do this so I could have the benefit of her help in monitoring it while allowing me the freedom to focus on other things. We decided on some ground rules.

First, I had to stay out of it. That meant I had to hide the damn thing from myself. I took the icon off my desktop so it was no longer visible unless I went to it specifically in the Finder. I removed email from my phone, entirely. I repeat: I cannot access my inbox from my phone. (This is the part where other professionals typically fall out of their chairs.)

Second, we wanted to make sure we were transparent about these changes. I added a notation in my signature that lets recipients know that my inbox is monitored by Susan with a nice link to her bio online. I notified my team that Susan would be seeing all of my messages and that I might be slower than usual to respond. I encouraged them to use Slack for internal messages. I confirmed that Susan would not be responding as if she were me and that anything they would find from me in their inboxes would still be authored by me. After telling my team about these changes, I got a lot of support and encouragement to stick with this.

Finally, I had to decide what messages would need to be redirected to a different account, for my eyes only. I notified my CPA, Finance Director, financial planner and attorneys that certain sensitive correspondence should now come to a separate, personal email address. Voila. A new way of living with email.

And, you know what? I'm better for it. I have gained so much, and so have the people around me. My team gets a more focused, less distracted, less frantic leader. My kids get a more present parent. I have learned that there's nothing in there that is earth-shatteringly urgent. The really urgent things come via phone calls. The important conversations happen face-to-face. My inbox had evolved into a device for scheduling meetings, and a place where my team kept me updated on progress or accomplishments. Those are all important things that can be reviewed twice each day. There was no longer a need to stop in the middle of the sidewalk and respond. And that's exactly how I was living before. I have gained a freedom and serenity that has made me feel even more committed to redesigning my relationship with technology. Maybe you can't go down to two times a day, but what could you gain by giving up even a little of that pull from the push notifications on your device?