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Let me tell you a story about email and a dog with a problem. 1/13
My parents had a dog, Gracie, who barked at people who passed the house on the sidewalk. 2/13
They appeared, Gracie barked. They went away, she stopped. 3/13
She did this for years, and over time the barking grew more intense. Why? 4/13
The behavior was being reinforced. Gracie barked; the pedestrians went away. Mission accomplished! 5/13
Poor Gracie was not blessed the ability to entertain counterfactuals. When we were little, my brother and I would try, and fail, to get Gracie not to bark so she could see what would happen if she didn't bark. 6/13
Now, I am highly responsive to emails. I get 100-200 per day not counting spam and practice inbox zero. 7/13
But I do often wonder: Am I barking at pedestrians? What is the counterfactual? 8/13
On the rare occasions (e.g., natural disasters) when I let some or even many emails linger, I find many of them walk right out of my inbox. 9/13
This doesn't apply to everything, of course, but some problems take care of themselves, without barking. 10/13
I've tried to strategically delay responding to certain emails to see if they ambulate away. I recommend experimenting with this. 11/13
Tools like Boomerang and some Gmail features let you triage emails into purgatory for a period of time. 12/13
Gracie barked at pedestrians until the very end. They still come and then go, of course. But I think she felt a real sense of accomplishment in her life. 13/13
