Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026, 7:34 am
Falling Behind Intentionally
Filed under: Combatting FOMO
remember how in 2009 or 2010 I was attempting to almost phase out E-mail usage (unless or wherever it was absolutely necessary, e.g. account creation/verification). It didn’t exactly work, but I did reduce my usage of E-mail.
Some years ago I made a habit of checking my E-mail only about once a day (unless I was expecting some very important and/or time-sensitive message from somebody).
This year I sometimes don’t check E-mail for a couple of days straight. I then realise I didn’t even miss anything critical. Put another way, there would be no benefit associated with checking E-mail more frequently, except maybe FOMO.
“Today I catch up with email,” I told someone yesterday, “and I think the above is outdated?”
I saw a message from 3 days prior. “Sorry, I don’t check email every day (anymore),” I said.
No harm done, and had I checked messages all day long I’d basically spend a lot of time triaging/gardening SPAM. About 90% of the E-mail I receive is SPAM.
Even if there was no SPAM at all, I’d probably still choose not to check E-mail every day.
Society, in my experience, compels people to be “wired” all the time and do everything “in real time”. That prohibits focus and obstructs concentration.
If you’re not a “999″ operator, then you probably need not see or respond to everything urgency.
