The Obsessive Compulsive E-Mail Checker

There was a recent article on the New York Times which hit home for me, which reported on the obsession to read/categorize/respond to each e-mail received in a timely fashion. 

As soon as I reached college in 1992, I've loved e-mail. The thought of communication with people far away without postage or a long-distance phone plan was a great way to keep in touch with people, and I distinctly remember the summer of 1995 was a time of massive e-mail usage. Everybody in college was using their accounts, and it became a great way to keep in touch with school chums while busy with our summer internships. My usage of e-mail was so profligate that one of my fellow interns played a practical joke and spoofed an e-mail from "Corporate Information Technology Policy Enforcement" telling me that they were terminating my access and reporting e-mail abuse to my boss. Upon getting the e-mail, I froze in panic only to see my co-worker doubled over in laughter.

After I graduated from college I became a "hoarder" of free e-mail accounts - starting with Juno, though Yahoo!, Excite, Netzero, Bigfoot, Mail.com and Hotmail later became fair game, as I figured that it wouldn't hurt to hold on to multiple accounts until it was clear which service was best. It was simply the best and easiest way to keep in touch with friends, and there was nothing more exciting than to have the monotony of a workday interrupted by an e-mail from a friend. Not wanting to use my work account for personal e-mail, and because Juno mail needed to be "downloaded" by dial-in, I would somewhat obsessively sneak my laptop to an analog phone line every 20 minutes or so to check my personal e-mail.

Fast forward to 2003, when I got my first Blackberry. In some ways, the obsession decreased since Blackberry's "push" e-mail service meant that I could simply get e-mail real-time and not have to actively check it, and adding all my personal accounts to my Blackberry meant that I no longer had to spend time on the Internet checking different accounts. On the downside, for the first two years I had my Blackberry set to "vibrate" upon receiving a message, so time with my wife and friends would constantly be interrupted every 3-5 minutes with *buzz*, [unholster Blackberry], [read message], [reply optional], [delete optional], and [put Blackberry back in holster]. I turned off message alerts to save my sanity and my marriage.

At present, I use my Blackberry Inbox as my "to-do" list of sorts. Things that I receive as an FYI I delete, knowing that a copy exists in the native e-mail account. Things that I need to reply to get kept until I can craft a response, and my desire to deal with things sooner than later to prevent things piling up spur to me to respond quickly, but thoughtfully. And yes, there's definitely a strong sense of satisfaction to see my Blackberry Inbox hovering near empty.