In partnership with
Hey,
Quick question. How many times have you checked your email today?
Most people honestly don't know. And I'd guess it's more than they'd think, because checking email has become something we do without deciding to. You pick up your phone for one thing, and somehow you're back in your inbox.
There's a study I keep coming back to on this. In 2015, two researchers at the University of British Columbia, Kostadin Kushlev and Elizabeth Dunn, took 124 adults (students, professionals, people in medicine and finance) and ran a simple two-week experiment. For one week, people checked email only three times a day with notifications off. For the other week, they checked as often as they wanted with notifications on.
During the three-checks week, people reported significantly lower daily stress. And they didn't feel any less productive.
The part I find most interesting is that most of them found it really hard. Three times a day sounds easy until you try it and notice how often your hand reaches for the phone.
Here's why I think it works. Every time you check, you hand your attention to whoever wrote you. Their request, their timeline, their urgency. Do that thirty times a day and your stress response never really gets a chance to settle. You're always a little bit on call.
So here's the experiment for this week:
Pick three times. Late morning, after lunch, and late afternoon work for most people.
Turn off email notifications on your phone. This is the one that matters most.
Outside those windows, the app stays closed.
At the end of each day, ask yourself how stressed you felt compared to a normal day.
If three feels impossible, pick four. Kushlev himself said the goal is checking less overall and finding a number that fits your life.
This week's partner: Proton Mail
One more thing that helps is having less junk come in to begin with. A lot of what pulls us into our inbox is silly anyway: marketing emails, lists you never signed up for, and the spam that follows your address around after it leaks in a data breach.
Proton Mail is encrypted email based in Switzerland, and they don't scan your messages to target you with ads. You can also sign up for things with an alias instead of your real address. When a list starts spamming you, you shut off that alias and it's gone.
Try the three checks for a week, then hit reply and tell me how it went.
- Dr. Matt Jones
Here is a link to check out Proton now. I use it every day, and I am a big privacy advocate. I believe using Proton is a step in the right direction.
Free email without sacrificing your privacy
Gmail is free, but you pay with your data. Proton Mail is different.
We don’t scan your messages. We don’t sell your behavior. We don’t follow you across the internet.
Proton Mail gives you full-featured, private email without surveillance or creepy profiling. It’s email that respects your time, your attention, and your boundaries.
Email doesn’t have to cost your privacy.
