
Why Donald Knuth Checks E-mail Only Once Every Three Months - da5e
http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/07/17/bonus-post-how-the-worlds-most-famous-computer-scientist-checks-e-mail-only-once-every-three-months/
======
lionhearted
Am I the only person that likes email and enjoys using my inbox? I get only
two things there - correspondences that are mostly interesting, and reports
that I specifically want.

It can be a drag when a _bunch_ of correspondences come in at the same time,
but I try to gently discourage people from sending me useless junk, so I'm
mostly free of sifting through useless junk. Gmail/Google Apps is good enough
about spam, and you can use a second email address if you need one to sign up
for things like frequent flyer accounts that send spammy-ish reports.

Seriously, if you don't like your inbox, try registering a new Gmail or Google
Apps account and give it out selectively to people who don't send stupid
stuff, and use your old email for stuff that's overwhelming. This holds up
pretty well even into the 20-40 replies per day required range, which is more
than most people are going to get. The key is making sure junk doesn't get
mixed in with your real email - when pretty much everything is something you'd
enjoy or want to see, the inbox is not this evil cursed thing.

~~~
vpdn
The issue does not lie in the few emails you get every day, but the
distraction which accompanies it.

There are basically two modes of email usage:

1\. Pushed: Email gets pushed to your email client or mobile phone, followed
by a audio visual indicator showing the amount of messages received, sometimes
also a snippet of the email.

2\. Pulled: You manually go to gmail.com to check whether new email arrived.

The push-mode is counter productive because it breaks your train of thought.
Assuming your 20 emails arrive evenly distributed over an eight hour work day,
that's one email every 24 minutes. From my experience, it takes roughly
30minutes to get the mind to focus on any moderately complex problem
(especially programming). So there goes your work day.

The pull mode can be highly addictive: On some occasions, checking your email
account is rewarded with a non-empty inbox (inbox zero people will think
you're nuts), other times your inbox is empty and you don't get any reward.
This creates a reinforcement which is variable in amount (emails received) and
interval (when and whether you receive some) which psychologists call a
variable interval reinforcement schedule and is found to be highly addictive.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement>)

Point is, the cost of email is more than just the time required to answer the
20 emails. That is usually not the problem, unless you're a VC :-)

~~~
Dylan16807
You can defeat the variable interval by simply checking rarely enough that
there is _always_ new mail.

~~~
jamaicahest
If you are able to do that, you can hardly be classified as addicted though.

~~~
Dylan16807
Almost no-one is _truly_ addicted to email. The problem is the people that are
moderately 'addicted', and they can certainly wait a few hours a couple times
to kill the unpredictable reward system.

------
hugh3
I'm sure this works great, if you have:

a) A diligent secretary who stays on top of things for you, and

b) Tenure

Even (b) might not be enough if you're just a regular tenured professor rather
than Donald Fricking Knuth.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Not to mention, she brings him printouts of the urgent e-mails. So how
exactly, is he not using e-mail? Just because he doesn't use an e-mail client
doesn't mean he's not using email.

~~~
michael_dorfman
Because e-mail doesn't come with a filter that only brings urgent things to
your attention.

~~~
shasta
You can configure your email client to alert you to emails marked as urgent,
but in my experience that includes every and only email from HR.

~~~
eru
Do sane email clients (like mutt) even have urgency levels?

~~~
Raphael
I think he just means that "Urgent" is in the subject.

~~~
eru
OK. But I suspect HR everywhere will use Outlook.

------
michael_dorfman
Based on my own experience communicating with Knuth, I'd say that the real
situation is a bit more subtle than the article lets on. It's true that he
prints messages out, and writes hand-written notes on them, and only sends out
replies (and $2.56 checks) every few months. (In my experience, it's more like
6 months than 3, btw.)

But, I suspect he scans through things far more often than that. I recall once
e-mailing a question about one of the pre-Fascicles, and he mentioned the
question in one of his "Computer Musings" lectures held a few days later-- and
the question was by no means urgent. But, since it was related to something he
was currently working on (i.e., the pre-fascicle currently in production) his
secretary must have slipped it to him the day I sent it.

~~~
tjr
I've sent him emails and received hand-written letters within a few weeks. I
once sent an email and received an email (written by Knuth, sent from his
assistant's email account) within a few hours. I'm guessing that I just
happened to write at a good time.

------
stephth
So the secret to coping with email is hiring someone to do it for you.
Thanks..

I like this part though:

 _For some jobs, e-mail hinders your ability to perform at your peak. In such
situations, it would seem, as Professor Knuth has concluded, you might have an
professional obligation to stop using highly distracting electronic
communication._

~~~
pavel_lishin
Or perhaps simply not having your inbox right in front of your face.

When I go to a movie theater, I have an obligation to turn my ringer off, but
this doesn't mean that I give up using telephones.

------
ajg1977
Disappointing, I'd have expected him to check every 64 or 128 days.

~~~
maw
If you count working days, maybe he does! Take
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weekdays+in+three+month...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weekdays+in+three+months),
assume two official holidays for every three months, and Bob's your uncle.

~~~
eru
I had to look that phrase up.

~~~
spearo77
Or, Robert's your Mother's Brother :)

------
acangiano
* Results not typical.

------
pnathan
Typically I check email on the hour unless there's some sort of email thread I
need to keep on top of.

If I really need to get something done, I check it every 2-3 hours.

I vastly prefer email to IM, texts, telephone, voice chat, or video chat. It
is archivable, searchable, does not interrupt, and provides the ability for
contemplative answers (or short answers) as required.

My email policy:

* I store email indefinitely

* I reply to you as soon as I can (no dangling responses).

* If I need to concentrate, the email client gets turned off and you can call (or walk over to my desk).

------
runjake
I hate to burst some bubbles, but Donald Knuth actually has an email address.
He just doesn't give it out. Presumably he states otherwise to discourage
people from emailing him.

If I recall correctly, he has a secretary who sorts through the cruft for him,
most of the time.

Having the benefit of a secretary handling your email doesn't really mean you
eschew email.

------
ksolanki
Has anyone else read 4 hour workweek where Tim Ferris suggests checking email
only once or twice a day at fixed times? Sounds like an idea to me. Avoid
distractions but still stay on top of things.

This is similar to Donald Knuth's routine except that the frequency of
checking/replying is higher and there is no secretary.

~~~
Luyt
This is exactly what I do; I check my email three to four times a day, and I
certainly don't let my email client run in the background and interrupt me at
times which are always inconvenient.

------
tcarnell
Email is broken and ugly. We are constantly trying to bend email to be a
useful productivity tool - to me the idea of filtering emails by text found in
the subject for example as a way of organizing/categorizing emails
demonstrates just one of the sheer inadequacies of email.

Email is also incredibly insecure, how many people have sent emails to the
wrong people? you mistype an email address, or select the wrong 'John Smith'
from the address book and you've just sent top-secret confidential files
outside of the company walls.

Attaching files should be a thing of the past, we should simply reference
files within email text - again, much better for security because only
authorized people will actually be able to access the files, rather than with
attachements where all recipients (even erroneous recipients) can a). view the
document, and b). very easily distribute the document to unauthorized persons.

I am astonished that corporations continue to use email as the basis for
internal communication.

I really hoped that Google Wave could have killed email - or at least replaced
gmail with something more useful. However, the failure of Google Wave
demonstrates again that Google are not 'inventive' - they just take existing
ideas/products and improve on them. shame.

...maybe the people that replace email with something appropriate will be the
next Google...

------
dools
Answer: because he doesn't have clients, employees or customers.

------
asrk
People always make it sound like checking email, facebook, twitter, etc.
updates is not a choice, but something that just happens by itself without you
having the chance to get away from it unless you totally discard said
service...

Whenever I work I just close my mail client, put away my phone, open my work
browser(yes, I have a work and a play browser because I'm one of those people
who always have a gazillion tabs open at the same time) and TA-DAH! No
distractions!

------
pvsnp
Recently, I stopped putting up notifications of emails on my phone and
desktops and suddenly I realized that my productivity went up. The constant
reminder that an email is waiting for you that you need to attend is annoying.
If I want to IM, I'll use IM. People rarely need immediate feedback, they can
call you or IM if needed. I just check my emails when needed. It's still far
more frequently than perhaps a lot of people, but it's on my own time.

------
tathagata
He obviously, isn't involved in any customer support :)

------
tlb
I've had email for 23 years now. Maybe I should plan to cut it off at 25.

------
handrake
I thought he'd use perfect Bayesian spam filtering algorithm which he secretly
developed that can bang out every non-urgent not-so-much-worth-reading email.

------
ohashi
The idea might be helpful in some circumstances but the actual content of the
post doesn't validate the point well at all.

------
gpambrozio
Basically his solution is: get a good secretary... He didn't even need to have
people send snail mail... Or print emails... So not cool.

------
gcb
knuth, the destroyer of trees.

~~~
Apocryphon
All of those $2.56 rewards to bug finders burn through a lot of checkbooks.

~~~
lurker19
Don Knuth has not used a checkbook in years.

------
urmish
My friend just forwarded me this link on gmail

