"I spend more time in my inbox than with my family. If it weren't for email, I would be a much happier person."

Do you identify with this quote? You aren't alone. For many people, email is source of dread, stress, and anxiety. Don't worry. We're here to help.

Welcome to the Revive Your Inbox 21-Day Program!

You will benefit greatly from this program. When you complete it, you will be able to:

• Acquire new tools and strategies to handle email more effectively
• Improve your communication skills
• Identify your email personality
• Be the proud owner of a healthy inbox
• Eliminate the causes of email anxiety 
• Enjoy more free time

Day 1 of Revive Your Inbox focuses on reducing the amount of interruption and distraction that email causes. Let's take the first step now.

Take a look at your inbox. How many of your emails deserve immediate attention? Compare this number to the number of times that you've checked your email today.

Unless your job demands replies within minutes, checking your email frequently is harming your productivity. According to a case study by Loughborough University, it takes an average of 64 seconds to fully recover from being interrupted by an email. 

Instead of reading your email as it arrives, we'll ask you to start checking your inbox at set times each day, preferably for fixed amounts of time. If your work requires you to be at a computer, you'll need to disable notifications to break the cycle of constantly checking. The fewer times you are notified about email, the better you'll be able to focus on what you're working on.

How to disable email notifications automatically

If you don't want to disable email notifications permanently and only want your notifications to be stopped when you need to focus, you could disable your notifications manually, each time you need to stop the email notifications. Fret not, there is a better way! Inbox Pause in Boomerang for Gmail and Boomerang for Outlook allows you to schedule your messages to come into your Inbox at the times of your choosing, effectively stopping your email notifications temporarily. You can schedule your Inbox to unpause after a set amount of time, or set it up so that the new emails only arrive a few times a day - say 10 AM, Noon, 3 PM, and 5 PM. With Inbox Pause's powerful customizable exceptions, you can even set certain important emails to come through at any time of day - perhaps from your boss or your child's school.

How to disable email notifications manually

Of course, you can also disable notifications manually. Here are the steps to turn off both desktop and mobile notifications for some popular mail systems and devices.

Final Thoughts

Today, we took an important step: email no longer has the power to interrupt us when we're doing something more important. Tomorrow, we'll work on reducing the amount of email coming in.