April 12, 2012

Daily Writing Challenge: Turn off your EMAIL

Before you have a heart attack, I'm not suggesting that you turn off your email forever--or even for a full day. But for me, turning off my email for an hour or two at a time is like taking a vacation these days. In fact, I've grown to love the feeling. Now I close out my email every time I write something other than  . . . an email.

Before I started writing, my email was often like a lifeline. I needed that ding every few minutes to prove I existed--that I was alive and someone needed me. Even if that someone was Old Navy telling me about a sale. But now, the connection and satisfaction I get from writing  a scene far outweighs the email buzz. I don't need it anymore. In fact, I don't want it anymore.

So, if you are rarely without your phone or email window, I recommend ditching them for an hour a day. Much like the shoes you stuff in a closet to "throw away later"--after a very short while, you won't even notice they're missing.

Other Tips to Keep Email from Ruining your Life:
  • Unsubscribe mercilessly. You are not going to miss any sales or coupons or whatevers.
  • Don't subscribe to Dailies. That writing prompt arriving in your inbox every morning might as well delete itself, am I right?
  • Use an Alias. Set up a trash account on google, yahoo, whatever. Use this for everything you need to supply an email addy for but never want to hear from again.
  • Use Folders. If you take a few minutes to set up sorting actions to filter your email into folders, you will save yourself hours. When everything's sorted to a folder, you know if you have anything important to look at right away.

1 comment:

  1. Great tips! I have an inordinate amount of filters set up for my emails. I'm a email filter junkie. And I'm proud of that fact. When something hits my account it pops over to the folder it belongs. And if it doesn't belong anywhere? It ends up in the Junk folder. I sparingly check this folder. Thank goodness! I love my filters!

    ReplyDelete

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