It’s Time to Give Up on Email

Four steps for getting over a very bad relationship

You got a new credit card, maybe, or signed up for a food-delivery service. Let the emailing begin. First there’s one to verify your new account, then a message to confirm that you’ve verified your new account, then an offer for an upgrade or a discount. A service I recently started using sent four emails for a single activity, counting log-in notices, confirmations, receipts, and confirmations of the confirmations. Workday, the software that manages HR and payroll for my office, emailed me an alert to approve the hours I had already approved. Online retailers seem to send at least three logistical emails for every order—when it’s placed, when it’s shipped, and when it’s been delivered. Then they send a handful more: a customer-satisfaction survey, a nag to fill out a customer-satisfaction survey, a thank-you for filling out a customer-satisfaction survey.

Also in your inbox: All of the email you get that is, you know, actually related to your job, your interests, or your personal life. Forget reading or responding; even just finding those messages amid the junk can be a chore. Email has felt overwhelming for a long time now, with all of its spam and scams and discount codes. But what used to be a vexatious burden is now a source of daily torment. Email cannot be reformed. Email cannot be defeated. Email can only be forsaken.

The situation may not have always been this bad, but it was never any good. Email technology wasn’t owned by someone in particular, so anyone could use it. That fact alone should have been foreboding. Now add in the sudden ease of sending messages for free, at the speed of light, to anyone in the world, and take a wild guess at where this was always heading. If we didn’t know, we should have known that our current email nightmare was inevitable.

I encourage you to confront the simple truth that email’s present and degenerate state could not have been avoided. It’s better to accept that no good end could ever have come of the technology—or that, like nuclear energy, its benefits would have always been weighed down by the risks of ghastly misappropriation. Holding this position frees you from the belief that email has been victimized by someone else’s bad decision making, or that the system can be fixed, gamed, optimized, or perhaps replaced. This is step one of your email exorcism.

Alas, there is no opting out from email. As a practical matter, your inbox cannot be abandoned altogether. The same is true for postal mail: To function within the normal bounds of contemporary society, you must be addressable in physical space. You must be able to receive Amex bills and Amazon baubles, and also, you must subject yourself to lots of junk. This analogy between your home’s mailbox and your computer’s inbox is so easily made that it’s often overlooked. Both are stuffed with garbage by default, but also just a few essential messages.

Here’s step two of giving up on emails: Think of them the way you think of paper letters, as intrusions on your life that merit only intermittent and perfunctory attention. Your morning drop of unread messages can and should be treated like an inconvenience of the weather, akin to autumn leaf fall or seasonal allergies. Once you’re in this mindset, you can begin to sift through emails on your screen, in just the way you’d sift through letters in your mailbox or rake leaves from your stoop: with disengagement.

Leaves on the ground are inconvenient; they can also be slimy and disgusting. You should think the same of email. Step three of inbox disavowal is to understand that messages are vaguely scatological. Accept this fact, and a new world opens up to you. Now your goal will be to touch the stuff as little as you can, and to avoid inflicting it on others. With that in mind, you won’t send an email or reply to one unless absolutely necessary. That’s a kindness to your contact list, but it’s also good for you, because any given email may be answered, leading to what can only be described as a vicious cycle of email correspondence. When you’re tempted to email someone in your office, fight the urge. Walk down the hall instead, or make a phone call, or send a Slack or Microsoft Teams message—or just find the answer that you need yourself.

When you do send emails, make sure that you’re expecting no reply. Assume that other people treat email with the same wariness that you do. Should you happen to receive an answer to your message, there’s no need to see it as a source of fresh contagion. Instead, treat it as an unexpected gift or a sudden smile from a stranger. You did not deserve it, and yet, here it is. A thing like that.

Having changed the way you’re sending email, you’re ready for step four. Now it’s time to purge the habits of reviewing, triaging, deleting, or responding to your email when you have an idle moment. These acts may be carried out to “feel productive” when you’re waiting for a matcha latte or sitting on a train. But really they’re depriving you of time for more important, even sacred, life activities, such as staring into space or lusting after strangers. To help preserve this time, you might remove some email accounts from your phone, or delete the email app in its entirety.

Finally, in step five, you must evangelize your mission. Email is a public-health concern. Gently correct your mother when she tries to correspond. Reprimand your email-happy colleagues. Punish email abuse by withholding your replies. Or, more gently, darken someone’s doorway. In short, you must show the sort of leadership that will encourage others to forsake their email too. We’ll never stop the rain of email, no matter what we do. But if we work together, maybe we can build a kind of shelter.