Email used to be my DRUG. I was addicted to refreshing my inbox- I loved seeing those new messages pop up, no matter what they contained. And I didn’t just love checking messages, I loved answering them too!

But then my business began to grow, and quickly. I had more weddings to photograph and edit, more meetings, more travel, and so on. And slowly, I began to fear my inbox.

It had become this beast I couldn’t tame- as soon as that little “loading 15 new emails” bar would appear on my phone, my chest tightened. I’d read the ones that seemed most pressing and promise myself I’d answer them once I was back at my desk, but as soon as the bold text disappeared from  a subject line in my inbox, it somehow seemed less pressing. And so my emails would pile up.

So I took email off of my phone. 

And it’s been the single biggest stress relief of my career! Because my office hours are supposed to run 9-4, Monday through Friday, checking emails at 11pm on my phone was causing a LOT of unnecessary stress! It was a reflex- every time I picked up my phone, I’d check my email too, which meant I could be in the middle of an amazing girls night out, only to see that I had a request for something that could easily wait until Monday morning. And then I’d spend the rest of the night worrying about answering that request, making it impossible to be entirely present with friends.

These days, I’ve implemented a few more rules for email:

1. Turn my inbox OFF of my phone. There are exceptions every once in a while, like if I’m working out of the office for several days at a time and won’t have access to my laptop, but otherwise, no email on my phone!
2. If I open a new email, I must answer it right away, assuming it’s within my ability. It’s so easy to read an email from an editor asking for an additional image for a feature and think “I’ll just send that later,” and before you know it, three weeks have gone by and you’ve missed the feature deadline. So, if you’re reasonably able to answer it right away, do so!
3. Use Boomerang to schedule messages I’ve written after business hours. Boomerang’s an amazing app for Gmail that allows you to write a message and then schedule it to be sent at a later time. So, let’s say I’m answering emails at 9pm on a Monday night, I’ll schedule them to be sent at 9am on Tuesday morning instead. Why? Because it’s important to me that I don’t teach my couples to expect responses 24/7. We desire to run a business that enables a life that we love, meaning our lives don’t revolve around running all things AGP. And my couples love that about us, that we’re real people, too! Setting healthy expectations for office hours from the beginning is part of how we maintain those boundaries between work and real life.

So here’s my challenge for you: get out your phone and turn off email. Right now! And see how it feels to go for a weekend without obsessing over your inbox. You can do it, I promise! And you’ll feel freer and more present with your friends and family as a result :).

And because I’m totally obsessed with these photos by David Abel from our time in Paris (and starting sentences with the word “and,” apparently?), here’s an example of us being totally present. See how carefree we are?! Probably 100% due to the fact that I took email off of my phone. Or because we were in Paris, one of the two.

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