If dealing with email is as stressful and creatively draining for you as it is for me, then you have been temped to just say "f*ck it" and turn off the whole damn thing. While my most recent post was all about how to manage an overwhelming email box, in this post I want to explore the idea of going on an email detox. An email detox as I am defining it, is not using email at all for an extended period of time.

Now I know what you are thinking. No way in today's email-dependent must-have-an-answer-now world could you possibly think of turning off your email. If social media MOFO is a habit of guilty pleasure, email isn't quite so optional. We rely on it for everything from work correspondence, to communicating with our health care teams, to confirming e-commerce transactions. Just try moving through the day not being asked once for your email. I dare you.

And then there is the simple fact of the increased productivity and efficiency that email has brought to our lives. For example, instead of having to call six different members of my board of directors, I can email all of them at once with all the same exact information. If phone beepers and fax machines of years ago accelerated our methods of communication, email ramped it up to light speed. That's hard to imagine living without.