Batch processing email
Sit down once and clear thirty or a hundred messages in a run
Messages land all day and go unanswered on purpose. You work the whole queue in one sitting instead. The argument is that the cost of email is the switching rather than the typing, so grouping the replies removes most of the damage to a working day. A single pass clears everything that arrived since the last one. Some people bolt it to fixed hours. Others just refuse to open the inbox in between. One common variation opens a writing session with a few easy replies, to get the fingers moving before the hard page.
Who backs it
Sorted by strength of stance
- Adam GrantDoes it
Organizational psychologist · Think Again
He will not answer a single message at random. Thirty, forty or a hundred go through in one sitting instead. On writing days he deliberately opens with a few easy replies, because a flashing cursor is a worse place to start than an inbox.
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #399 transcript
Aimed at the same thing
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A fixed, early wake time, often before anyone else is awake
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Write something every day, published or not
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Phone-free first hour
No email, news or social media until you have done something of your own
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Blocks of time cleared of the schedule to sit with one hard problem
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Margin notes
Writing in the margins while reading, especially where you disagree with the author
Backed by 3 of 54 stacks: 2 do it, 1 recommend it, 0 have discussed it
Habit entry · notes paraphrased from cited sources, quoted excerpts copied from the transcript they link to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.