Member-only story
Do You Really Think I Still Respond to Emails Myself?
We need to rethink how we work, or we risk creating more “pointless” jobs.
Every day, my inbox fills with requests, surveys, reminders, and follow-ups.
Most of them aren’t urgent. Many of them aren’t even relevant to the work I’m supposed to be doing.
Yet they demand time and steal my attention.
These interruptions fragment my day, scatter my focus, and leave little space for deep thinking or actual output.
We tend to think that more communication channels increase productivity. In reality, they often do the opposite. They overwhelm. They distract. They create an illusion of work while draining our energy.
I tried dealing with this.
For a while, I answered emails at the end of the week. It didn’t help. The messages kept piling up. People got impatient. They sent reminders. Some escalated things unnecessarily. I found myself spending hours responding to messages that didn’t require my input in the first place.
“Why are people working on this?” I asked my wife. “It’s not even relevant.”
“Why not just answer quickly and move on?” she asked in return. “I was reading about the two-minute rule. If an email…
