I spend a lot of time writing and answering email. Email is, according to timing, the third longest activity on my computer (although I am using three computers and can check this only on one of them – #timing please let us link computers for an overall analysis) … anyway – back to no email – as a holiday treat I decided to shut down all my email accounts 5 days before Dec. 24th and promised myself not to touch them until Jan. 11th. It turns out that I will come short one day of this plan. Nevertheless, I am quite happy with the result and the positive effects of this email absence. Needless to say that reading emails during vacation brings you back into a working mood (or never lets you out of it), not reading email had positive side effects before (I did this twice in the last 20 years of ‘doing’ emails). Many issues that come during such a break often solve themselves without intervention or can be solved quickly within a few hours after being back in the email world.
Well, I will turn on my email accounts now and see how much work has piled up … BRB.
So, 380 emails later – a paper submitted by a co-author, a rejection for a previous submission, a talk accepted, a chapter revised by a co-author – the best part of all this is that dealing with a ton of mails is a very quick thing, with a relatively low threshold for simply deleting out of date emails or replying quickly to urgent matters. What’s left are some longer replies I will do now …
Happy New Year!