Ecstatic Emailing: Turn Your Inbox From Torture to Bliss

Let’s face it, email sucks.

Each day, I open my inbox to find hundreds of messages waiting for me. Even though I’m a religious unsubscriber, 30% are marketing emails that go straight to the trash. The rest are messages from co-workers, friends, and family members with thinly veiled requests for how I should be spending my time:  “Can you send me that file?” “Hey, we really need to think about this new partnership?” “Can you make a reservation for dinner?” 

Each time I open my inbox, I'm confronted by this truth: "the inbox," as Brendon Burchardputs it, "is nothing but a convenient organizing system of other people’s agendas.” 

I have tried various strategies to mitigate the suffering caused by this daily onslaught of messages. My company LIFE XT has created a compassionate email policy where we try to limit the number of messages we send to one another. I’ve also tried various strategies of avoiding email for most of the day or only checking once or twice.

While helpful, none of these approaches has fully solved the problem. And all of this has led me to the sobering realization:   in the modern world of business, there may be no way to escape the tyranny of the inbox. 

So I have decided to change tactics.  Instead of resisting and avoiding the inbox, instead of trying to persuade others to send me fewer messages, I have begun exploring whether it’s possible to transform the 2 to 3 hours each day that I spend on email into a mildly pleasurable experience.

I call it “ecstatic emailing.”

Ecstatic Email Tactics

Tactic 1: Change Position

Like most modern-day knowledge workers, I spend the bulk of my waking hours sitting at my desk. I habitually do email and this position as well. To break this pattern, here’s the first tactic of ecstatic emailing: if you’re writing emails, change your physical position.

Sometimes I go outside. Sometimes I sit back on a comfy chair. Sometimes I settle into a long yoga stretch while firing off emails on my phone.