I turned my work e-mail notification off for two weeks and here is what happened

I started my professional career as a workaholic. My first few weeks I was very motivated and satisfied with work and environmental conditions. I was working long hours during the week and I would even go to work a few hours on Saturdays. As a new graduate I didn’t have too much responsibility but whatever I was given, I tried to do my best and work my way through. After I a month I was given responsibility of coordination between the firm in USA we are working for and internal coordination. I was doing my best passing on information to right group of people at the right time. I added the email to my phone, had the notification on.

One disadvantage of working with a firm across the ocean is time difference. They would send an email during their work day and it would be midnight in our time zone. And I learnt this the hard way, no, not all emails are nice. Sometimes they would send you an email that would really give you trouble. I did lose few nights of sleep because of that. After I decided to quit that firm, I deleted my e-mail account from my phone and didn’t care about anything after work hours or during the weekend.

I started working with similar excitement in my current firm. The e-mail traffic is not too bad however, internal emails can be a little too much sometimes. I decided to turn off emails from my phone and turn off the notification from my computer. Guess what, it was a smart decision after all. Sometimes if I concentrate on a task, I don’t even check my emails for couple of hours. I strongly believe emails are not for urgent tasks. Everyone I work closely with has my phone number. Instead of writing an email they can just ring me and check how I am doing.

As a conclusion, it is one of the smartest decisions I ever took. This helps me keep my concentration high when I am working on a complicated task and I don’t ruin my personal time by worrying about something I cannot control at that point.