Why Donald Knuth Checks E-mail Only Once Every Three Months | Hacker News Reader

Why Donald Knuth Checks E-mail Only Once Every Three Months

calnewport.com

114 pointsda5e49 comments

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.

I like email. But things I like can be even bigger distractions than things I dislike. Reading even the most interesting email is not the same as being productive (although it could possibly help productivity later -- maybe).

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 :-)

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

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

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.

I like email, but I dislike all email applications I've tried so far.

But yes, multiple accounts. I have a sign-up-for-stuff account, a personal account, and a professional account. It has made worlds of difference - hard barriers for purposes are much more effective than filters that sometimes overlap, and usually miss brand new correspondences.

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.

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.

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

Gmail has been doing a pretty good job. But fair enough, it's something that still requires a human touch.

But he's still reading e-mail - just not on a monitor. And I'd wager he's still replying to it - though perhaps he has her type it up.

He replies by handwritten notes on the printed email. These are sent by snail mail to the recipient.

And he's using email to about the same extent that a telegraph is a telephone. (With a telegraph, you speak your message out loud, and then the message is sent via a wire to a recipient, so it is just the same as a telephone, right?)

Ah, I didn't realize the responses were sent via snailmail.

True, but I've written enough of those for Gmail that almost every single email gets categorized automatically, so I know exactly which ones are important and which ones are not.

The tiny minority of new, unfiltered emails that ever actually hit my inbox are usually interesting. And they end up having filters written for them if they're going to reoccur.

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.

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

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

OK. But I suspect HR everywhere will use Outlook.

Well then you have the basis of a perfect system: configure your email client to only alert you of emails not marked urgent.

As a student, this also comes from the department. It is apparently urgent and important that there is a talk in three weeks time which is optional!

c) Your purpose is to think about fundamental concepts independent of anyone else

c.1) You have made an insane amount of money, fame, and influence doing so already

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I had to look that phrase up.

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

* Results not typical.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

knuth, the destroyer of trees.

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

Don Knuth has not used a checkbook in years.

books.

printed emails.

checkbooks.

the list goes on.the man is unstoppable.

You need to consider how much less energy he uses by not be running an email client all day long (including the benefit of completing your work without interruptions).

It is not a clear winner.

My friend just forwarded me this link on gmail

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