Email is killing your productivity

And you don't realize it

🏷️ Categories: Time management, Attention, Social relationships.

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You are only as productive as your inbox allows you to be.

If today you opened your email “just to check,” and when you looked up it was already afternoon and you hadn’t done anything you actually wanted to do—this text is for you.

You’ll see why email ruins the productivity of millions of people every single day, what effects it has on your well-being, and most importantly, how to protect your attention in the age of distraction. We’ll look at neuroscience studies and key productivity principles to understand why this happens and how to escape the black hole of your inbox.

Your attention is the most valuable resource you have. Treat it like it.

1. Email is an ecological shift

Neil Postman, the same author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, explained it masterfully in a lecture (1998): when a new technology enters the scene, it doesn’t simply add to what already exists. It changes everything completely, like a shift in the ecosystem that can trigger unpredictable consequences.

• We didn’t end up with the same office + email.

• We ended up with a completely different office after email arrived.

And that new office is a swarm.

Cal Newport (2021b) says we live in a “hyperactive hive mind”: a system based on continuous, unstructured, unscheduled conversations that can arrive anytime, from anywhere. Every day, you receive tons of messages on your phone wherever you are—at all hours, with no order. Sound familiar?

We’re not built to work or live this way.

And yet, we spend our days trapped inside this communication swarm.

2. The false need to communicate

Here are some numbers worth thinking about...

More than 319 billion emails are sent every single day, and the number keeps growing (Statista, 2024). Office workers handle an average of 126 emails per day, spending 2 to 3 hours daily dealing with them (Mark et al., 2012). What should be a tool for solving tasks has become a machine for creating them.

Email doesn’t solve—it multiplies.

This happens because it reduces communication friction. It’s too easy to send an email, and when something becomes easier, we overuse it because it’s so convenient. In psychology, this phenomenon is called the cost of emission.

In the end, it all means one thing: more messages and more work for everyone.

3. The effects of email on your productivity

The problem isn’t just the number of emails. It’s their constant, intermittent rhythm. Every time a notification pops up, something breaks in your mind.

• Our brain isn’t multitasking: it works better sequentially than in parallel (Newport, 2021b).

• Every interruption has a mental cost: it takes about 23 minutes to regain full focus after being interrupted. This is called the attentional cost (Mark et al., 2008; Smith, 2003). With just 3 interruptions an hour, you lose 1 hour of productive time every day.

• These interruptions happen every few minutes, shattering your attention into a thousand pieces, preventing flow, memory, or clear thinking (Foerde et al., 2006).

Email destroys your memory, creativity, and focus.

4. Anxiety, addiction, and burnout

Email doesn’t just harm your productivity. It hurts.

Studies have shown that the more time you spend on email, the higher your stress levels during that same hour. In another experiment, researchers discovered that when people checked email less often, they responded with more empathy and less anger (Newport, 2021a).

And then there’s the addictive variable reinforcement pattern...

As Tom Stafford explained, email is addictive in the same way slot machines are. You never know when something good will come, and that “intermittent reward” releases dopamine in your brain every time you open your inbox (Charman-Anderson, 2017). Email is the office casino…

This emotional trap makes you feel FOMO for missing a message.

And that keeps you hooked.

5. The reactivity cycle

Replying quickly to emails doesn’t give you peace of mind. It gives you more emails.

This is how the reactivity cycle works: someone emails you, you reply instantly, that person learns you respond quickly, and they email you again for every little question—because they know you’re always available. In the end, you feel you must always be available to avoid breaking that expectation (Newport, 2021b).

Your attention gets hijacked. Your energy too.

6. Change the workflow, not the tool

The problem isn’t email itself. It’s the chaotic, reactive, ruleless workflow we’ve built around it. Email is not work. It’s just a coordination tool. We use it with no limits and no intentional design.

The solution isn’t to disconnect forever—it’s to set clear protocols.

Here are 7 practical keys to reclaim your time, attention, and energy:

1. Don’t check email first thing in the morning or before bed.

Hyperconnectivity has blurred the boundaries of work more than ever. Separate life from work—if you don’t, you’ll be “at the office” before you even arrive.

2. Check email only 2–3 times per day.

Create specific windows to check email—and never look outside those times.

This way, you design your day, not your inbox. Wait for those windows to reply and dedicate the rest of your time to crucial work hours. These will be 1-hour blocks without any digital medium. Just deep work. Just you and your goal.

3. Turn off all notifications.

If email doesn’t ding, it doesn’t interrupt. Close it. Take its power away.

4. Sort emails automatically.

One of the biggest problems with email is that everything looks urgent.

Create multiple inboxes for the same email based on projects, topics, keywords, or senders. Emails will sort themselves automatically, and you’ll always know which inbox to prioritize.

You choose—not your inbox.

5. Automate what you repeat.

Rory Vaden’s 30x Rule (2015): if you do something 30 times a year, automate it.

This means spending time creating templates for emails you send repeatedly and setting up autoresponders for generic messages with clear answers. This will save you hundreds of hours in the long run.

The future of work will not be built by replying to emails faster.

It will be built with environments that protect deep thinking, focus, and high-value work. Companies that demand being “always connected” and “multitasking” will fall behind. Email—and the culture around it—is a cultural crisis of information overload.

You can’t afford to keep wasting your time.

Your most valuable resource deserves to be treated with respect.

✍️ Your turn: What will you do to manage your email—before it manages you?

💭 Quote of the day: "Email is making us miserable. In an attempt to become more efficient, we’ve accidentally implemented an inhumane way of working." — Cal Newport, Email is Making Us Miserable

See you in the next letter! 👋

References 📚

1. Charman-Anderson, S. (2017). Breaking the email compulsion. The Guardian. URL

2. Foerde, K., Knowlton, B. J., & Poldrack, R. A. (2006). Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, 103(31), 11778-11783. URL

3. Mark, G., Voida, S., Cardello, A. (2012) A pace not dictated by electrons: an empirical study of work without email. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems New York, USA, 555–564. URL

4. Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress. University Of California. URL

5. Newport, C. (2021a). E-mail is making us miserable. The New Yorker. URL

6. Newport, C. (2021b). A world without email: Find Focus and Transform the Way You Work Forever (from the NYT bestselling productivity expert). Penguin UK.

7. Postman, N. (1998). Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change. URL

8. Smith, R. E. (2003). The cost of remembering to remember in event-based prospective memory: Investigating the capacity demands of delayed intention performance. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory And Cognition, 29(3), 347-361. URL

9. Statista. (2024). Emails sent per day 2027. URL

10. Vaden, R. (2015). How to Multiply Your Time. TEDxDouglasville. YouTube. URL