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Deter frequent Mail.app email checks
Authored by: tinker on Oct 20, '05 12:33:53PM
Regarding the "willpower is good" responses: (a) I agree. (b) Why aren't you working? ;-) Seriously, though, "inability to avoid peeking at mail every few minutes" was, in retrospect, overstating the case. When I'm absorbed in a project I can easily ignore it all day. The problem comes when I'm multitasking (which is often), and dealing with e-mail is too appealing because it's necessary and it's less of a pain than other tasks. The irony is, and people often fail to get this, I don't actually like e-mail, and if I could do away with it, I would. Which leads to the next point.

Regarding the "turn it off / throw it away" responses: This would be ideal, and indeed I would already have done it, were it not for the fact that my job (and to a lesser degree my life) requires me to read, process, and answer e-mail on a regular basis, and I often find myself needing to send it as well. Turning e-mail off is pretty pointless, as I find that I need it soon enough.

My ideal mail setup would be a program that lets me send mail whenever I need to; doesn't let me check mail manually at all; and bugs me with new mail automatically every, say, two hours (I'll try GregLink's suggestion, thanks much). Setting the check interval and willing oneself not to check in between goes a long way toward achieving such a state most of the time, but if there are a few simple software tweaks that get even closer without costing as much as the psychoanalysis necessary to rid oneself of a minor impulse control problem, I'll take them. That's all.

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