Another week has (almost) passed since the last time I checked my email. Technically, it’s only been 6 days since my last peek at the inbox, but since I needed to do the bills today, it made sense to process my email so that I could attend to any bill-related messages.

Disappointed?

It’s not really a big deal that I didn’t make it a whole week without checking my email though. A much bigger deal is that I thought about email a lot less over the last week. It’s barely on my mind, which frees me up to concentrate on more important things.

Good News

My news consumption has improved as well. I only read the news once per day now, and only after lunch and all daily tasks (writing, photo processing, etc.) have been completed. I will then take a 20 minute break to catch up on the news.

A 20 minute break has surprisingly provided enough time to satisfy my curiosity about what’s going on in the world to the point that I don’t really think about it during the rest of the work day. In fact, I’ve checked my timer on several occasions to make sure I didn’t miss the end of my break because it seemed like a lot of time had passed. It’s always nice to see that I have 5 minutes left to decompress before jumping back into my project(s) for the day.

It would be a small win to naturally want to spend less time reading the news each day. Should I limit news reading after I’ve stopped working for the day as well? I think so, because I could be using that time for going on a run or relaxing with Nadine.

Today’s Stats

• Checked email: 1 time
• Time: 11:14:23
• Total messages: 160
  • Inbox: 55
  • Bulk: 105
  • Important: 0
• Time per Message
  • Inbox: 14:37 (3.8 messages/minute)
  • Bulk: 11:46 (8.9 messages/minute)
  • Management (filters, etc.): 07:59
  • Total: 34:22
  • Average: 4.7 messages/minute

Notes

One of the big wins today was that email checking only took 34 minutes! This is nearing the mythical 30 minute threshold that I’d like to reach for weekly email processing. However, email management tasks such as refining filters, unsubscribing from mailing lists, etc. took nearly 8 minutes, so I think I will get closer (and hopefully beat) the 30 minute limit as the filters become more refined and I don’t have to fiddle with them as much.

In any case, today’s messages were processed 31% faster than last week, and I spent over 15 minutes less in the box this as well. I’ll take it.