Can My Business Survive with Hardly any E-Mail Communication?

I am an email addict.

I only realized how serious this is a few weeks ago. I kept on noticing signs of it for a while though but I also kept ignoring them. Just like the one that the first thing I do after waking up was checking my email on my iphone. Or going to walk with my two sons and checking email on the phone every couple of minutes to see if nothing new arrived.

But that’s all gone now and I started a process of recovery from this madness. 

How do I do it?
The first thing was obviously to drastically cut email usage. Since last week I check my email 3 times a day only. At 9am, 11am and 3pm.

Secondly, I had to change the way I use email. Instead of checking email and spending time processing messages every time I open my inbox I had to come up with a different solution. So, the first two sessions are really to check if nothing urgent has cropped up. And if not I do not reply to any emails but go back to my work. At 3 I have all my coding and writing done and at that time I can take some time to process emails.

I use a five sentences rule for my email communication. This means that I try to answer email in five sentences or less. My emails are short and to the point.

Third step was to let my clients know. This was the difficult part. Many of them already got used to instant replies. But to my surprise no one complaint or even commented on this. It became natural to them.

And how did that improve my life?
Well, I get things done much quicker. In the past because I was checking and processing emails constantly I would get distracted every couple of minutes. Now, because I have no access to my email (more on that below) I simply work on one task at a time and get it done much quicker than before.

I am also less stressed. No more shifting tasks, there is only one task that’s important to me. The one I am working on, like writing this article. And I do not stop working on it until it’s completed. No distractions again.

And in addition to the above, my work day is shorter yet I still get more done.

How do I limit my access to email?
As I have only begun my recovery I had to go for extreme measures. I removed email settings from my phone. I also use a program called Selfcontrol (Mac OSX only) on my laptop to block mail servers. The beauty of it is that once you set the amount of time you want it to run for and initiate it, Selfcontrol can not be stopped. You can turn it off, restart your computer or delete the program altogether. And you still won’t get access to your email until the timer finishes it’s run.

Can my business survive with such strict rules for email and communications?
I don’t know. I hope it can. To be honest I haven’t noticed much change since I started recovery. So I hope that since it will have only positive effect on me, it will affect the business this way as well.

Will I loose clients because of it?
I don’t know either. But again I hope and wish that I don’t.
If there is an emergency there are always phones so I am not cut off from the world anyway.

What’s my plan for the future?
Ideally I would love to cut on email even more and check it only once a day. I will probably keep my 3pm session, or simply one in the afternoon. At that time all items on my todo list are usually done and I have time to process various requests that come through email.

Will this work?
I am eager to find out.

Have you ever had problems with email or communication addiction in the past? Do you have your own stories on how you beat that? Please share them in comments.