Collection · 6 articles
Email overload and mental health.
Email is the rare work problem that follows you home, and the rare mental health problem your calendar files as admin. Each piece here takes one part of it and stands on its own, so start with the one that describes your week. The dread itself is uncertainty you can't close. It says nothing about how well you work. Then the bill, where hours are the smallest line. Then the checking, the guilt attached to a number you long ago stopped reading, the evenings work email quietly takes, and the version of all this that only owners get, where the norms and the last decision are yours. Each one ends with changes that hold past the first good week.
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Why your inbox makes you anxious, and what lowers it
Inbox dread is not a report on your workload. It is uncertainty you cannot close, a queue you never set the pace of, and no state that counts as finished.
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The real cost of email overload, and how to price it
The hours are the easiest line to count and the smallest one. Here is the whole bill, and a way to work out what your own inbox is actually costing you.
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Why you check your email constantly, and how to stop
The reach is a question you cannot answer any other way. What the one experiment on checking less actually found, and the changes that hold past week two.
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Unread email guilt, and how to end it
A four-figure unread count is not a ledger of people you let down. What the number holds, which feeling it produces, and the moves that clear it.
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Protecting your evenings when work email follows you
The damage is not done by the twenty minutes. What the research says about after-hours email, and the evening rules that actually hold.
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Email overload when you own the firm, and what to change
The load is different when the consequences, the norms and the last decision are all yours. What that does to an owner, and the changes that hold.