One thing I would really love in an email client is a strong separation between reading and writing email. During productive hours when I'm sitting at my desk, I would really like to be able to 1) open GMail, 2) read old email 3) Write new email.<p>I absolutely do not want the ability to read new email during that time. In fact, I would really like to set up GMail so email only arrives on a fixed schedule, say 2-4 times a day.
For those who want to experiment with a (free) iPhone email app which does <i>not</i> allow you to write, reply or forward emails can take a look at Pigeonal. (disclaimer: I'm one of the developers).<p>The app scans your inbox(es) for ~200 domain names from services such as Github, Basecamp etc and groups all emails in boxes (pigeonholes), depicted by the service's icon.<p>You can tap each pigeonhole, scan the subjects and decide to 'archive all' or tap individual emails and mark them for 'follow up'.<p>That's all you can do. I'm personally not much distracted by reading emails, it's the writing part which pulls me out of my concentration and Pigeonal just about offers enough functionality to create follow-up tasks. Moreover, since the app only shows emails from a small list of domains the number of emails I have to process is relatively low.<p>The app is an experiment, your mileage may vary. We've developed it to see whether there is an alternative to the email inbox archetype. So far it's working for us, but it's far from perfect and I'm not as brave as the OP to completely ditch email from my iPhone.
I have never bothered upgrading to a 'smart' phone - I am happy with my flip phone that is great at making calls and texting. I don't need games, I don't need email access and I don't need the poor battery life a lot of those phones suffer from. I charge my phone once every 3 or 4 days and I am happy.<p>Should the need arise, I generally carry my netbook with me everywhere I go - and it only comes out if there is an emergency. At least then I have internet access and all the tools to actually make a difference as opposed to just being able to respond to an email. If it isn't an emergency, then it can wait.
I'm sure it's quite liberating to cut back severely on email, and I don't doubt the increased productivity it brings while trying to code or do other high-concentration tasks, but my one problem with this system is:<p>> If I happen to be away from my computer for a few hours it’s likely someone else will see the email and reply. If it’s something truly urgent that only I can help with, the other partners have my cell number and can call/text me.<p>It sounds like you've simply offloaded your compulsive email checking to other people. This system wouldn't work if everyone else at YC also stopped checking their email regularly, because then the urgent things wouldn't be caught in time and you wouldn't be pinged on your cell.
Congratulations Harj on breaking a harmful habit. Keep Going!<p>You did it by intent, while I only did it by circumstance. As such,
we've probably learned different lessons from the experience.<p>For me it was my health. Those little things like walking and typing are
often taken for granted until you can no longer do them. Not feeling
well enough to accept invitations to go have fun with friends can wear
on you. The same is true for not feeling well enough to answer emails or
phone calls.<p>Could you leave your voicemail full for six months so no one else can
leave messages?<p>With your YC involvement, probably not, but I had to do it, and it
taught me a lot about interaction and contribution. Interacting with
others is a choice. Similarly, making a contribution of your time and
effort is also a choice. When you know you'll be in more pain after
typing an email, or driving to see friends, your perspective changes
since you finally realize there will be consequences, or better said,
there's always a cost to the choice of interacting and contributing.<p>Making a conscious decision on your own needs and opinions of whether or
not interacting is worthwhile is far better than merely reacting out of
impulsive habits and social pressures to be polite. When you know it
will cost you something and you still feel it's worthwhile, then you are
consciously investing your time rather than mindlessly spending it.<p>I know I've posted this before, but...<p>Treebeard: "You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to
say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth
taking a long time to say." -- J.R.R. Tolkien
You need to classify this based on what type of work you do. For a developer, checking email would knock him off the zone. For a different job, one email answered late would mean a lost business for example. (the OP is a YC partner)
Here is my system of not wasting too much time on e-mail: I only have one client application set up to access my various accounts - Zimbra Desktop, which I don't have any entries for in the OS menu, and I don't know any passwords myself as they are randomly generated and stored in KeyPassX.<p>Every day a cronjob starts up the client at 4pm, which starts minimized (thank you, KDE), proceeds to fetch new mail, apply various filters (e.g. CCs marked read and archived), and maximizes the window 2 minutes later.<p>Half an hour later another cronjob does a 'killall' on it - that way if I wasn't at my desk at 4, I wouldn't have to come back to be greeted by unanswered e-mails.<p>And, as the article says, there is always a mobile phone for anything truly urgent.
Why such a hatred, not in this piece, but trending, against e-mail? It doesnt bother me much. What i did instead, i dropped my phone, figuratively speaking of course. A month ago i switched, lastly, my phone off. What a relief, no more calls, no more call when i'm busy, no more missed calls and whats more important, no questions about why you didnt answer, called back, etc. I'm free!
I've done something similar. I disabled Safari on my iPhone. I've also set forwards on important mail to my icloud account which has push on the iPhone. This way if I do receive an important email, I'll answer or call immediately. Freeing myself of apps and Safari has made me more productive but now I wonder why I even need a Smartphone. The only apps I use now are Notes, Mail, Maps and the Music player. I'll admit one part of the reason why I removed all these apps is depression. Productivity is not my primary reason, but it has had a great benefit.
My technique for this is:<p>1) Separation of work and personal e-mail into two accounts (which is good for a whole number of reasons).<p>2) Work e-mail is configured on my phone but disabled. It means that if I have to access it it's relatively painless but there's no notifications and not even any ability to manually check without re-enabling it (which is a mental barrier which I know I shouldn't be crossing - like the HN noprocrast thing - you can override it easily but you know you shouldn't so you don't).<p>3) Personal e-mail isn't set to notify in any way except through the badge (I find personal e-mail is rarely urgent enough for me to feel any strong compulsion).<p>I find that the barriers you have to put up are actually very small, just enough to stop the habitual, quick checking. As soon as it takes more than a second or two to do, you stop doing it pretty quickly.<p>Now if only I could find similarly successful mechanisms for Twitter, RSS and the news.
Right now I have an iPhone 4, a Galaxy Nexus, and a BlackBery Bold 9900 in front of me. I do dev work, so I flip between devices fairly regularly.<p>My Bold is still my daily device. Sure, the other two phones are better in almost all ways, but e-mail and unified messaging is one thing RIM knows how to do. At a quick glance, I can see incoming e-mails, SMS, twitter or Facebook, and know if I need to respond. I can set up different audible alerts for each and/or different coloured LEDs.<p>I rarely have my desktop e-mail client open, since my BlackBerry helps me filter out messages as needed while I work.<p>You can rally against me if you like, but I like my BlackBerry better than my other devices. It simply works for me. And I think this aversion to e-mail/distractions is a by-product of the devices being used.
At iDoneThis, we have several shared email inboxes (Helpscout is fantastic for this: <a href="http://helpscout.net" rel="nofollow">http://helpscout.net</a>). What ends up happening is that most of our emails are processed out of shared inboxes, which makes it easier to respond in batch (as Harj points out) while still showing responsiveness (because people batch at different times). We end up hardly using our personal company email addresses.
So "no email" means "no email on my smartphone". And didn't we have this discussion years ago, when Tim Ferriss hawked it to us as a groundbreaking, zen-like idea?<p>And no, I do own a smartphone, I just have to be very bored (or anticipating something, preferably romantic) to be checking email with it. The constant blackberry-like push email thing always seemed a bit odd to me (and I <i>do</i> have a biff running on my desktops), especially when it's exacerbated by a whole boatload of additional bleeps and bloops (twitter mentions, SMS, whatsapp, etc.). Recently I didn't have access to my iPhone for two weeks (left it in a friend's car) and "had to cope" with my old 6310i. I did feel a bit liberated, but mostly because it freed me from charging that device all the time…<p>Is it my "forever alone" nature and everyone else is getting that many apparently immediately actionable emails all the time? Or is it an age thing, as I'm not quite old enough for constant SMS-ing at a formative age, but do remember FIDOnet/UUCP access to news/email in once-daily batched form?
There have been quite a few posts recently with dramatic tales of breaking the email habit and trying to drop/cut back on email. No doubt email has been something that we struggle (and usually fail) to control. So we are left with dramatic measures, like "no email" or support cheats - like getting other people to do it for us.<p>Perhaps these mostly behavioral based solutions feel good (they make us feel as if we taking back control) but are they really the we can do at solving the problem of out of control email? Or are we just shifting the problem into text messages & calls or onto other people?<p>I'm working with a team now on re-architecting email to give us control over our email. We've started on a related but simpler problem - when I give a website my email I give them control. You can check it out at <a href="https://leemail.me" rel="nofollow">https://leemail.me</a><p>Soon we will be expanding this control to all email communications. If this sounds interesting, get in touch.<p>-Lee
Great real-world anecdote, it's really refreshing to see busy people (I'm assuming Harj is a pretty busy person) understanding the implications of email overload and trying to deal with it.<p>Not everyone needs to completely remove email from their phones, but doing simple things like turning off push notifications and trying to push one's self to only check at certain intervals has been shown by research (and substantiated by experiences like this) to have huge upsides to productivity, lower stress levels, and creativity.<p>I'm learning a huge amount in this arena, it's a fascinating topic. If anyone wants to see a very cursory summary of what I've assembled so far, check out a small deck at <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/jlyman/email-overload-13506201" rel="nofollow">http://www.slideshare.net/jlyman/email-overload-13506201</a>
Getting a device with proper push email would have solved the issue of having to check email all the time. Having email on my phone with good gmail push notifications is the most liberating thing I've ever done, but that may be because of the type of work I have to do day to day.
Yup, email is a distracting compulsion. And make no mistake, it is just that.<p>For my sanity, I have email notifications turned off on my phone, so I only get new messages when I explicitly open the app (which I still find I do much too often). Definitely helps.
Author raises a lot of good points. And given how tied we are to technology it's really good there's continual interest in us evaluating it in our lives and how we feel about it.<p>The pendulum seems to have shifted in recent times and I think we're all going through something analogous to the drinkers/smokers in the 60's/70's. Those were feel-good times of indulgence and merriness. We realized the consequences though and learned moderation as a society. I have a feeling we're about 10-20 years from coming to terms with a healthy technology lifestyle.
This reminds me of a nice local quote regarding the conflict of getting stuff done vs. the acceleration of tech addictions to Facebook, WoW, etc.<p><i>We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to</i>[0]<p>[0] <a href="http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html</a>
Not sure I follow. I don't take time off to "check" my email. When I get an email, I get a notification. I open it up, respond, and get back to what I was doing. Where's the time lost in this?
I think separating reading from writing email is a good thing. Emails you have received typically represent other people's agendas - those you write (especially if written from scratch not just a reply) represent your own agenda.<p>I would like a client that allows me to read in a browsey (flipboard?) way - no replies or forwarding allowed.<p>Separately I want the client to semi-automatically create emails from my to-do list - I get to edit and send.<p>This way I am able to understand what other's want me to know but I remain productive by focussing on my own agenda.
Once you delete fb, twitter, mail, quora, etc. from your phone, why not just carry an e-ink Kindle or a paper notebook/calendar and some kind of music player?
look up inbox zero and use mutt. i did try mail act-on for apple mail. but again you can always run mutt on a shell somewhere in the middle of nowhere.<p>A lot of the problems discussed in the article and the thread here were solved many many years ago.<p>But yes, as a friend of mine put it: "The interesting thing about email is that it gives us the impression that we're actually working, while we really are not."
We're building a service that will allow you to schedule a number of "email moments" a day: incoming messages are temporarily queued until those moments and the sender is notified when you're checking your mail next time. We're looking for test users at <a href="http://kukoo.com" rel="nofollow">http://kukoo.com</a>
Deactivate push messages from your phone mail app and only allow for manual checking. I did that. And now I have to wait to read email which is usually enough time to drop the crack.<p>It might not work if the internet is way fast like it is in the US. I am in the DR which might make a difference...
Would be good to setup a system where you are able to get people to label something as urgent and you would still get this otherwise you would see it when you wanted. Depending on who is sending the majority of email your way and your social relationships this could work well.
On the other side of the coin, I've noticed that email is the new voicemail - people expect emails to be replied to in a window of hours, not days. People are incredulous when I show them my phone (no Android or iOS, sorry) and ask "How do you get any work done?"
Thankfully I have managed to reject the requests from upper management to set me up with a Blackberry at various positions.<p>It pains me to see friends receiving emails on their BB whilst at the pub after work and fretting over the email they've just been 'pushed'.
I think a completely converse strategy works too - I'm getting notifications for everything on my iOS devices, Android devices, several PCs etc.<p>I just ignore them all now; pretty similar to ads on web. And I have them available everywhere if I actually need them.
Thanks for posting this Hart. You inspired me to simplify my iPhone apps. I removed my personal and work email apps, and a lot of other clutter.<p>Going well so far. It's so much more productive to only do email on a desktop, and it definitely frees up my thoughts.
Another issue with email on the phone is that I find myself replying to emails out of habit, in many cases to emails which require some thought in the response and half-ass te response because I'm on a smartphone and don't have a real keyboard.
Some of my friends follow, "no email checking" hour everyday at their work for focus. It's working really well for them and I'm thinking of giving it a shot too.
Very interesting write up Harj. I too deleted my Gmail sometime back but my motivation was different: I want to build an app with which I could write to anyone on email but vice-versa was not true.<p>Well it kind of started that way and after a few months of agony (unable to connect smoothly) and joy (better concentration) I am now with something interesting that you should see: <a href="http://bubbleideas.com" rel="nofollow">http://bubbleideas.com</a>
Hey, first world problems!<p>In my head I try to keep it as "If it is an email, it can wait until tomorrow".<p>The author un-synced his email from the phone? Big deal. It is not that smartphones do not let you think (which is also true), but that they are just yet another consumer good made to keep you disconnected from reality.<p>As usual, it just depends how you use them. Think of it as a laptop, do you program on it or just surf facebook?<p>Smartphones could be the ultimate hacker device, if used properly.