Email free days

For the most part, email-free days aren’t gimmicks.

They are a signal from someone senior that the amount of time spent relentlessly writing messages that may or may not be read, getting distracted by notifications or checking inboxes is a waste of productive time.

People should track and appreciate the hours that the initiative freed up. They should applaud the senior leaders that role-modelled how to do it and they should be encouraged about the creativity shown in the absence of this too-often-misused tool.

However, an email free day isn’t something that should be repeated every month. It should only be repeated until such time the habit changes (in my experience, three times at most). Anything else is a sign that the email free day is performance, rather than a determination to truly change the way the organisation communicates.