Cure Email Addiction – 6 Tips
| August 4, 2011 | Posted by James Williams under Addiction Self Help |
Email Addiction
Before the bathroom, before tooth-brushing, or breakfast, you check your email. Your loved ones are begging you to break off spending so much time in front of the laptop. Seem familiar?
It’s easy to get hooked by email addiction, because it follows a pattern called “intermittent reward.” Experts know the quickest way to cure a habit or form a habit in a dog is with reward.When the reward is not predictable, the habit grows faster.
We check our inbox for a reward: a communication from a loved one, a critical answer to a tech question, a random surprise that can improve our day. Sounds totally reasonable. And it is.
Yet the very structure of how we receive these communications reinforces the intermittent reward system and plugs right into our animal brain. We page through piles of useless email looking for that gold nugget.
Here are 6 simple tips to help if you fear you are addicted to email. The idea is to interrupt the process of random reward.
1. Identify the extent of your habit. How much time do you spend in front of your email? How much time reading through what is essentially junk and time wasters? Is email addiction causing you anxiety? It’s critical to recognize and assess the actual impact it is having on your daily life.
2. Use your email program filters to automatically select out and remove non-essential mail. Employ labels and folders to collect legitimate communications from friends, family, or work. No need to comb through junk. I have several categories that bypass my inbox and go straight into the trash. This stops the “sometimes” rewards so your experiences become more predictable.
3. Set a realistic block of email time, perhaps divided into 2 or more 15-45 minute daily sessions. Set an alarm if you must, so you don’t go over the time. After awhile you will adjust the time to meet the need.
4. Figure out how to separate your correspondence into categories of “action needed” and “information.” Answer “action needed” email right away, and save your” information” email to do all at once later.
5. Take back the phone! Handle everything you can by phone. Tell your correspondents you want to use email to set phone appointments for real time conversation. Bring back the human contact email may be replacing in your life. Loss of human contact is one of the needs that may be feeding the obsession with email.
6. Be gentle but firm with yourself during your changes. Only check email during your scheduled times. If you have a deadline for a critical assignment, try shutting your email down for awhile to see if you will accomplish more. Let others know you have decided not to let email control your daylight hours. For important matters, ask others to call you on the phone. Reward yourself with real human contact.
Click here to get immediate help for email addiction
