On Stepping Away from the Inbox

"The man who sent the first email is not overwhelmed by email.

"In our culture, it seems, this is unusual. While everyone else is lifehacking, streamlining, Slacking, and marking-as-read - all with the goal of destroying the very thing their inbox was set up to receive - Raymond Tomlinson isn't sweating email at all.

"Tomlinson, the principal scientist at BBN Technologies, is widely credited with having sent the first email across the ARPANET back in 1971. Today, he says he checks his inbox 'fairly frequently,' but only if he's not focused on something else. 'I can go a whole day without checking it,' he told me. 'I occasionally go a whole weekend without checking my email. . . .

"And besides, he points out, email as an item on a person's to-do list is now joined by any number of buzzing, dinging, distracting messages that pop up on mobile devices: texts, Facebook mentions, tweets, news alerts, and whatever other push notifications a person has enabled."

A recent Wired Workplace article, Mr. Tomlinson reflected that "[i]f you answer email within five minutes of receiving it, people start expecting that. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy."

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