Stop constantly check your email!

Yesterday we told you about harm notificationsThat you do not need, but want the company to create Web services, to "sell" you more advertising. Today Harj Taggar, partner of one of the best start-up incubators YCombinator, tells how he overcame the habit of constantly checking e-mail and received a life instead. Very inspiring story!

Six months ago I deleted the email from your iPhone simply by disabling Gmail-account. Technically, I could continue to check your mail from the site gmail.com in Safari, but I use 1Password to save the password, which requires a lot of time-consuming steps to login login. This inconvenience is more than enough to not check mail while walking or in the negotiations.

I was curious to find out two things: whether the e-mail was indeed constant checking addiction and how it really affected my life. On the first question, the answer has been received - for six months, I do not have quick access to e-mail on my phone. Transition period was difficult enough. In the early days, I was really shocked at how often the machine I wanted to look into the inbox. In fact, it has become a habit - to open every spare second Mail to see if there was something new. Soon, this feeling disappeared and was replaced by a certain sense of freedom.

It is worth noting that I became much slower to respond to the letter. But we YC came up with how to deal with. We have created a general e-mail address, which is read by all the partners. It writes our Founder (founders of the project, supported by YC) when they need our help. If I am going for a few hours on the computer, then someone else can answer this urgent letter. If the case is very urgent, and only I can solve it, then I get a call or write a text message.

Other side of the reason for the constant checking email has become the concentration of which is not lost even when I'm working at the computer with an open e-mail. Finally I realized that the e-mail - the biggest killer of my productivity. For example, if I'm trying to code, then I do not stop doing this to play the game, but I stop to read mail. And all this because I believe reading mail work! Refusal of permanent mail reader on the phone a little less dependent on the mail reader at all. Feeling just great!

I also began to notice that the rejection of the constant reading mail has changed my perception of time. Over the past six months, the days seem much longer than steel. If I'm going to walk from one place to another, I have time to look around, observe what is happening around (which is itself a great source of inspiration when you live in Palo Alto, a place crowded with happiness) and most importantly, to reflect.

Gift have time to think - the most valuable for me. William Deresiewicz says about it in his lecture Solitude and Leadership:

I realized for myself that my first thought has never been better. My first thought was not my idea, but someone else. It was then that I once heard somewhere on the subject, always the fundamental wisdom. The original idea can only be achieved by concentrating, diving into the problem, patience, creativity running.

Smartphones have led to the fact that it became difficult to immerse yourself in thoughts and work with them as long as one does not get polished ready for the idea of ​​creation. Joe Kraus calls it «SlowTech».

As soon as I realized the importance of what is happening in my life, I poudalyal whatnot - Facebook application, Twitter and Quora. For Twitter I missed the most. It was the best decision I have made in the last year and I strongly recommend that you repeat the same thing.