I’m kind of an obsessive email checker. I get a little burst of serotonin when my inbox lights up on Outlook, which I think is kind of unhealthy, but there are worse things, right? I also really enjoy writing emails, for the most part. This is because I am fantastic at finding new and creative ways to waste time, and writing emails is one of those things. And yet…as of right now, I am sitting with exactly 11,002 unread emails spread across my various folders.
When I say “stop reading your emails”, I don’t mean stop checking your inbox. I literally mean stop marking unread emails that you have not and will not open as read. You are lying to yourself. That is not an email you have read. That is not an email you even care about. What about those crazy people who check to see if their sent emails have been read using those weird extensions? You’ve just betrayed their trust!
When I was thinking about writing this (quite frankly) ridiculous piece, there were two ways I thought about how one should approach email, and I couldn’t figure out which one to recommend. So I’m just going to talk about both (clue: neither of them requires that you read your unread emails and clue again: they’re actually both pretty bad too, but such is the nature of email).
First, Marie Kondo. Clear your inbox of all those things that do not spark joy. Spam email? Delete. Mailing list blast? Delete. Shameless promo? Delete. Course assignment reminder? Delete. Coding challenge for that job-you-really-want-but-don’t-want-to-do-the-coding-challenge-for? Delete.
Ok. So there are some problems with this approach. But if you really wanted an anxiety-free life, dare I say that email is really not the right place to be? On the other hand, you could take this approach a little less intense and just delete (or please archive at the very least) the unread emails you’re about to mark as read? I’m personally not a huge fan of archiving — this is a story for another day — but it does leave you some room to return to an unwanted email at some later point in your existence, should you find the need.
Second, ergonomic chaos. Think about how long you spend each day checking each of those unread emails and then clicking the other button that says “Mark as Read”. It’s just a few seconds, but that time adds up. This is your youth, my friends! Time is to be wasted in other fascinating ways, not on Outlook or Gmail or heaven-forbid, Mac Mail.
According to a 2012 McKinsey Global Institute study, the average worker spends 28% of their workday reading and answering emails. To that, Adobe says, “Oh no, it’s much worse actually.” According to their 2019 annual email usage study (which is a weird thing to do annually, if you ask me), people spend approximately five and a half hours every day checking their email. That seems a little far-fetched to me, but the point of these mildly tangential email facts is that it is legitimately a huge time sink.
If you’re like me and have nothing better to do, by all means — go ahead. But ideally you have more fruitful adventures to embark on. So leave those darn emails unread. If you’re feeling a little guilt-ridden by the mess, some useful lies I like to tell myself are that I’ll eventually get to them, or that it’s useful to know what I have and haven’t read. But after a while, that ticking number isn’t clutter, it’s a game! Celebrate when you hit new milestones, like a hundred or a thousand unread emails (That many people want to email you! That’s so cool.)
Question: what is the goal of email? Communication. And organization of that communication. Takeaway: Use it how you like, but don’t let it become a chore.
Author’s Note (that’s me): I will most definitely regret that I have written this at some point in my life, likely the next 3 hours. Please never bring this up in conversation.
