Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

I’ve declared independence from email.

After more than 15 years of dealing with email, of checking email multiple times a day, of responding over and over throughout the day, of deleting spam and unsubscribing from newsletters and unwanted notices, of filtering out messages and notifications, of deleting those dumb forwarded jokes and chain mails …

I’m done.

It feels so good to say those words! It’s so liberating to break free from my inbox!

I’m done, because email takes up too much of my time. I’m done, because I don’t like being at the mercy of every incoming request, because I would rather spend my free time creating than replying to emails.

I could go much further into explanations, but I think you get the point. I’ll let others argue the point for me — a number of people have talked about and experimented with killing email … here are just a handful:

• Can we kill email?
• How to kill email before it kills you
• Video: One man’s experiment with email independence
• Declaration of Email Independence
• Business email overload

How I Ditched My Email Inbox

I’m actually experimenting with this over the next couple of weeks, phasing out email instead of ditching the inbox immediately. But the transition has already started, and I think by the end of today, I’ll be able to stop checking email entirely, or once a week at most.

Here’s what I’m doing: » Continue your journey »