Taking control of my email inbox has made a big difference to my life - often small things do! I've been using inbox pause on my personal email account for just over a week now. I've set it up so that I receive emails three times per day.
It's made me realise a few key things - most of the emails I receive are newsletters/marketing, that I don't really want anyway. I have been working on unsubscribing from as much as I can, and have been either deleting or archiving emails as they come in too. This means that my inbox is clear most of the day. On one hand, this isn't a big deal - it's just my inbox! But I can't deny the huge feeling of relief and freedom it's given me.
I haven't used inbox pause at work yet - and I'm not sure that I need to. My goal for work is to cut down the time I spend looking at my emails. I'm not sure that twice per day is realistic for me, but every 2-3 hours probably is. I need to experiment with it and see what works for me and my work-flow. I do have a large number of items in my inbox which I need to sort through and then create folders for the ones I'm keeping in the archive. What to keep/delete isn't as clear cut with my work emails - you never know when it might be handy to have a particular email thread.
This will remain a work in progress, but an important one. Restricting when my emails come in has been an eye opener. I hadn't realised how stressful and irritating the little 'ping' on my browser or phone was - or how disruptive it is to my day.
Years ago, about 2000 I think, I was on a training course somewhere in Spain and the instructor said that in the next ten years or so we'd all be living our lives inside little boxes. At the time I didn't understand what he meant, and I remember saying how ridiculous that was at the time...but actually in many ways I think he was right!
And if VR really kicks in, they will be little boxes that we can convince ourselves are luxury big boxes. We live in interesting times.