It went 6 pm and, believe me, I didn’t check my email until that time. I had to learn something and I had lecturers earlier, so I didn’t have time to check it, but, I am still alive and the world didn’t go upside-down.
Even though I don’t usually get more than 10-20 emails per day, I sometimes waste too much time by just checking it, because I simply begin to read what it is on it and there is a Facebook notification for a private message that I get and I go there to reply, and I end up spending a lot of minutes by simply scrolling down the page and not doing anything entertaining and productive.
In fact, the part-time job that I do is depended on using email, but I have already opened another email account to use it only as an Outbox and I do not show it to others, because I only want to send emails from it, which I learned from the New York Times best-selling author, Tim Ferriss (more on this later). So, when I said I didn’t open my email today, I meant my main email that I use for getting and sending messages.
You are not as important as you may think
And when I opened my inbox at 6.05 pm, I had about 11 new messages, and none of them was so urgent that I had to reply immediately, so I was lucky. But this is something usual and I don’t get very important emails too often that I need to check immediately, because most of the people that I know for any urgent task can simply grab the phone and call me, so they can better save their time and mine too.
If you just set a new personal record about the 100th time of checking your inbox today, then probably you left your important tasks undone and only reacted on your urges of the moment. As Cal Newport says, the famous physicists like Richard Feynman and Petter Higgs didn’t get a Nobel Prize by checking their emails, so although it is important to use it, you should reconsider your habits towards it.
You are not as important as you may think you are, so even though you should be respectful and try to respond to others as quickly as possible, you should try to finish your priorities first.
It has been widely told that you should not check your email in the morning without finishing any of your priorities of the day. If you send an email early in the morning, then who do you think will respond at that time? Value your time more, because if you don’t do that, others won’t do that too.
I am not thinking that I will continue with this new habit of checking my email only at 6 pm, because I have scheduled to check my email after I finish two important tasks for the day, so it should not be so late.
