Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done

by Jocelyn K. Glei

A modern, no-nonsense guide to getting rid of email anxiety, reclaiming your productivity, and spending more time on the work that matters. Let's face Email is killing our productivity. The average person checks their email 11 times per hour, processes 122 messages a day, and spends 28 percent of their total workweek managing their inbox. What was once a powerful and essential tool for doing our daily work has become a near-constant source of frustration, anxiety, and distraction from our work.Unsubscribe will show you how to tame your inbox and reclaim your focus, with tips on how free from email addiction and the "inbox zero" obsessionBuild a daily email routine that reduces stress and anxietyProcess your inbox based on what (and who) really matters to youWrite messages that get people to pay attention and take actionSet boundaries and say "no" to time-wasting distractionsPlan your day around meaningful work -- not busywork Productivity isn't about just "keeping busy," it's about leaving a legacy. Are you ready to Unsubscribe?

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Productivity, Business, Personal Development, Psychology, Management

238 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 4, 2016

About the author

Jocelyn K. Glei is a writer who's obsessed with how we can find more creativity and meaning in our daily work. Her latest book, Unsubscribe, is a modern guide to killing email anxiety, avoiding distraction, and getting real work done. Her previous works include Manage Your Day-to-Day, Maximize Your Potential, and Make Your Mark, which offer pragmatic, actionable advice for creatives on managing their time, their careers, and their businesses. She was formerly the founding director of the 99U Conference and editor of 99u.com, which earned two Webby Awards for Best Cultural Blog and a rabid fan base of productivity nerds. She lives in Los Angeles and online at jkglei.com.

Reviews

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tend to cringe when I open up my inbox. Will I have 5 or 50 emails to scan through? Will they bring good news or crushing disappointment? Yet I continue to check my email 10, 20, 30 times a day, despite the nausea it brings, just hoping for a "reward."

Makes you feel like a lab rat, when you think about it.

I honestly picked up Unsubscribe with lukewarm expectations. Another self-help book that I expected to give good tips, but ones I would never actually follow through, like New Years resolutions that fail by February.

Boy, was I surprised! Unsubscribe is easy to read with clearly labeled chapters, and real steps for managing inbox anxiety. It acknowledges that we can't get rid of email, but we can manage it so it doesn't become the huge time-suck that it is.

Later chapters give pointers on writing effective emails, as well as reasons why exclamation points and emojis might not be the devil.

Unsubscribe is well worth the read. Heck, I plan on buying a copy for myself to keep by my desk. Until they (whoever they is) come up with the "next" email. (I'm hoping for telepathic communication.)

[Dr. Tobias Christian Fischer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The aim is to reclaim your inbox and think about what matters most. Notifications for VIPs helps and checking your inbox less. Those thing help to focus and take back the time you need: you.

[Ashley Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the most useful self help books I have read in a while. My email used to be very clogged up and unorganised with useless emails. The tips in this book on how to automatically organise my emails has helped to decrease my anxiety when I click the gmail link in my browser.

It has also made me realise that I don’t need to click that link whenever I open my browser or when I close any window and before I close any of my other tabs. Now I only check my emails twice a day, and this has helped to make me feel more relaxed during the day.

[Nick Armstrong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have heard many of these tips before, but good as a reminder.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great strategies on how to handle incoming email, craft outgoing email, and rid yourself of inbox anxiety.

[Lenny Husen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was SO good that as soon as I finished each of the first two discs, I started it over again. The third disc is resources and templates which didn't make for as much interesting listening.

I used to think I was good at email--at least, I once LOVED the medium, knew how to use it, and responded to EVERY ONE of my emails sent to me by an actual person. I tried so hard to be kind, enthusiastic, grateful or at the very least, fair.
However, I have had some of the worst experiences in my life involving email...whether someone sending me a poorly written email and my being upset, or someone erupting in vitriolic rage threatening to burn down my house over an email I sent when I was tired or frustrated in response to their idiotic email, or people just not fucking ever ever answering multiple emails and acting like that is acceptable in ANY universe. It got to the point where I don't want to write emails longer than one word to anyone because someone might be upset and send me a Nastygram. I ended relationships and have PTSD over abuse hateful people have showered on me via email or in person regarding email. My brother and husband are not speaking currently solely because of email.

So I saw this audio book in Kinko's and it was an impulse buy, based on the title. I thought, "Gee, for 20 bucks, I'll bite." What a good decision that was! The first disc is outstanding, tons of excellent tips. The second disc is good, too.

I am deducting one star because as good as the book is, it leaves out some scenarios I would really have liked covered.

However, I strongly recommend this to ANYONE who uses email as part of his/her work, or who sends a lot of emails for any other reason. Or to anyone who has had the awful experiences I have had regarding email. Guaranteed, you will feel better learning that you are not alone, and there are reasons why Email is BOTH a curse and an extremely useful tool.

[Nathanael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unsubscribe

I had two reflexive reactions to this book: one on its ideas, but first, if you'll permit me, a brief reflection on its form.

This book is written like Jason Fried's book: an internet book by an internet person for the internet age. What do I mean? Aside from a few preparatory and connective passages, its sections, chapters, and checklists could be a Medium series or some blog posts. The shareable images and font stylings are already there!

I read a book, but it felt more like surfing a web site. In this vein, the author has written a book, but in reality compiled some blog posts. The experience feels more like one of those slide-cum-documents posted to Slideshare.net.

What happened to our attention?

Does it matter? On the one hand, no. Books are hard enough, so let's not add a barrier between internet-esque books and real books. But on the other hand, we won't think deeply enough or reason well enough if we cannot countenance more than a few hundred words between each subheading, pull quote, or illustration.

I guess I'm looking for more prose and less design. And for that feel like I must apologize, because the ideas in this book are worth engaging.

The philosophy driving this book, and for that matter most common critiques of email, is simply that email correspondence is distinct from, and likely distracting from, actual work. The critique of email is the same as meetings, middle management, and most of the touchy-feely HR stuff people used to mock in the '90s. This view of email is rooted, not surprisingly, in the experience of creatives like authors. And it's tempting to make it universal.

I don't think that it is. For any sales or service or lower-level professional, the email inbox is actual work. It's the primary way we deliver value. As an example, in my role as a software consultant, my clients email me their questions, and about half the time it's most appropriate to reply directly (the other half of the time, a call may be more apropos). In such cases, a negative attitude towards email isn't the right approach. Rather, we should approach email wisely and attempt to deliver maximum value through the medium.

Helpfully, the second two-thirds of the book are perfectly aligned with that goal. The tips resulting from the author's philosophy of email are both practical and wise.

Understanding an email's audience, remembering their emotions and experiences, and seeking to build empathy are exactly what we ought to do and mostly do not. We can rely too much on quick email replies and thus send emails rotely and wrongly. Asking oneself if the message's tone is right or if instead should pick up the phone are rare, wise choices. These are the tools that will stay in my toolbox.

[Melissa Hartfiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to get through this book but not because it wasn't good! Exactly the opposite! I kept stopping to implement some of the strategies (most of the strategies actually) and it has had a profound effect on my productivity. That has made me happy. There are multiple strategies and loads of examples for handling the influx of email we all receive on a daily basis for work (and many can be ported over to social media and instant messaging as well). The book itself is very useful and even more so, are the many email scripts included at the end. What I loved about these wasn't just that there was a template for almost every situation you can imagine, but that the author broke down each one and explained WHY it worked so well (especially great for the fee/money negotiation templates). There was also an appendix of tools to help you manage your inbox.

All in all a very helpful book and for the first time in over 5 years, I finally feel like I have some semblance of control over my inbox. I'll be hanging on to this book and referring to it over and over again, especially when I feel like inbox overload is starting to spiral again.

On another note, the author's cute little illustrations also made this a very fun read too!

[Hots Hartley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not really relevant: I already know the time parasite that is email, and this book didn't really introduce any novel concepts for combating it or substituting new forms of communication to help me get my work done. The central problem with the book is its constant referral to the creative as a single-person, selfish endeavor. It isn't as simple as unsubscribing or unplugging from your work, when you need your teammates to help you create. For team creation -- like building a game, or creating a fantasy world requiring both story and illustration, for example -- you need to constantly communicate your thoughts and provide feedback. This book didn't address that type of creation in any meaningful way.

[Alex Linschoten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eminently practical. If you're looking for some solutions to the problem of email -- and it is a problem -- then this book delivers a good deal of value. If you've been following others' writings on the email problem, there might not be so much for you in this book since a lot of it is unoriginal, but as a one-stop shop, this is an excellent place to start for most.

[skullface · Rating 5 out of 5]

Practical advice on managing expectations and finding clarity in how you spend your time. Roughly equal mention of academic studies, "productivity gurus," and general creatives alike, which set a welcome tone for me as a business-minded designer. Like most self-help books, it tells you what you want to know when you need to hear it.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of this is common sense and things that make you say "oh of course" but reading it hopefully will encourage me to make some positive changes.

[Neal Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professionals spend 28% of their work time reading and answering email, according to a 2012 report by McKinsey consultants. Academic studies have found that email overload contributes to stress and burnout, hence “[m]ost professionals have resorted to one of two extreme coping mechanisms as a last-ditch attempt to survive the unending onslaught: at one end, there are the inbox-zero devotees who compulsively keep their inboxes clear, and, at the other, there are those who have essentially given up.” So says a 2019 Harvard Business Review article. Before the pandemic I was close to the first way of working, and during the pandemic I got close to the second. I bought this book for help in finding a workable compromise.

To help understand why email is so insidious, the book uses the asker/guesser dichotomy. The idea (from a 2007 blog post) is that some people, having been brought up to be “askers”, use the principle “if you don't ask, you don't get”. Even though that was one of my grandmother’s maxims, I am more of a “guesser”, meaning that I won't ask for something unless I see a reason for the other person to say yes, or at least a responsibility to consider the request. “Guessers” can find it hard to deal with “askers”. For example, a long while ago, someone I hardly knew asked to move in with me. It took me some effort, and reassurance from friends, before I managed to give the right reply: no. Since the medium of email favours “askers”, “guessers” need to learn to say no more easily, and/or use filters to see fewer messages in the first place.

Other aspects of email make it addictive and let it displace real work. Each message can be dealt with in a short time, giving a brief sense of achievement. But at the end of the day, if you’ve replied to 200 emails and done nothing else, then you recognise a lack. Solving it may not be easy, however. The other day, on the bus, I was approached by some young Christian missionaries. I told them I didn’t believe in God, etc. Then one of them asked “So what _do_ you believe?” Well, that required me to dig deeper. Likewise, if we want to get away from email then we need to identify what we should really be doing instead, and sometimes it seems challenging to get into that right now.

The book then offers advice at a more tactical level. The tips may not be new, but the big picture explanations justify doing them in a more thoroughgoing way. For example, it’s long been a given with me that all pop-up alerts are off. Now I am getting into the habit of looking at new email threads only at a certain time of day, and not every day. Before lunch I can get a run at new messages, having done some real work in the morning, and I come back from lunch with the pending messages less prominent in my mind, so I’m ready to do some real work again. Different routines will work for different people. One useful, and fairly obvious, suggestion is to reply with an end in mind (“actionable”), rather than just topping up the thread with more floating opinions. Another is to use alternative media. I favour the telephone, although for many that's a legacy technology. And, to help prevent spats, bear in mind that the tone of written communications is interpreted a notch or two harsher than the writer intended, since they lack synchronous cues such as tone of voice. The author suggests a sparing use of emoticons or smileys to counter this.

Overall, the book is useful if you’ve decided that you “want to be cured” of email.

[Graham Archbold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Email is a means of asking people for things. The majority of the time people will ask you for things and you'll ask them for things. We open our inboxes in the half-expectation and hope that someone will offer you something you'd actually really like. It's a dangerous hope. You'll mostly be disappointed.

Only very occasionally do I receive a message that brings joy. From someone I haven't heard from in a long time who has nothing important to ask of me, just some news to share that I find interesting or entertaining.

Sometimes I fantasise that someone would print out my emails and deliver them to my desk once a day each morning. The ones I want to answer I'll scribble replies on and put in my outbox to be collected in the evening. The junk ones I'd scrunch up at pitch at the wastepaper bin.

My back-in-time office dream would only be a novelty - I'd be fed up with sharpening pencils and stacking paper by the end of the week. But the desire to slow down and cut back on my reactivity is real.

This book reminded me of that - that I should pay less attention to email and simply check it less often. My new regime is to close Outlook on my laptop and not look at email between 9am and 12pm and between 2pm and 4pm. That has given me five hours of largely uninterrupted working each day, which is an incredible dividend from a book that probably takes just a couple of hours to read.

Besides advice on time management, some of the templates are helpful too in terms of content and style. The emails that are difficult to write are often when you are delivering bad news and the phrasing for that sort is helpful.

Really, a lot of the book is about communication: being clear in your purpose in writing and respecting the reader's time.

Not revolutionary but worth thinking about.

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I appreciated a few tips from the book, I felt that the format was unnecessary. The entirety of this book would have sufficed as a blog post or series without losing anything. I found myself skimming 80% of this, mainly because the book seems to have been written for an audience with a certain lack of familiarity with the internet and email in general.

Two valuable things I took away from this:

• Emoticons (not emojis) and exclamation marks are valuable and often necessary elements in email, as tone is often lost on the reader.

• Be mindful of setting false expectations for your contacts. If you have a habit of responding to every email as soon as its received, that will become what is expected of you. Email can be treated as digital snail mail in the sense that it doesn't often require an immediate response.

The rest of the book focused on unsubscribing and prioritizing. The final section was filled with "cheat sheets" for different types of emails a person might need to send. This can all be found online with a quick Google search.

[Avi Poje · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glei’s book *Unsubscribe* is one of the best general advice books about email I’ve ever read. It provides practical points on handling and writing email.

However, it fell apart when it said, “If you want to make time to accomplish meaningful work, you have to let go of the notion of an empty inbox.” I get it—the distraction of low-value email is detracting from producing higher-value work. However, that doesn’t give me the answer with what to *do* with the email piling up in the very-much-not-zero inbox.

Part of the problem with general systems for dealing with overflowing inboxes is that email clients vary so much. It’s hard to give good processing advice when someone doesn’t have that software. Even Glei recognizes that technology is fickle towards the end of the book. Indeed, one of the links she included was broken. Perhaps that’s why she focused on messaging and increasing email results, rather than purely processing.

[SVEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very pragamtic insight in how to optimally deal with information

Avg officeworker checks inbox 74x/day

Progress paradox = doing something easy to have achievement experience but if it was so easy is it really an achievement

Negativity Biass : email reader always assumes content emotion is one tone below sender's emotion interpretation: ie enthusiast = neutral, neutral = negative

Email reciprocity : volume you send you receive

Meaningful work =
• Makes you better
• Makes others better
• Life &Legacy enhacing

Email Procrastination avoidance
= having meaningful project
= email in 2 slots/day
= first 60/90min of day on your key project
= use quickreplies (yes read your message, will get back to you on..)
= Intro / Actionpoint Reader / Detail
= VIP sideline, ge messages from your VIP outside regulart channel

[Susanna L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jocelyn Glei’s Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done is a concise and highly practical guide that tackles the overwhelming stress caused by email overload. The book stands out by first explaining the psychology behind why email is so addictive and anxiety-inducing, then offering clear, actionable strategies to manage your inbox more effectively and write better emails. Glei’s inclusion of pre-written email scripts for common challenges adds real value, making it easier to communicate with confidence and clarity. For anyone drowning in email or struggling to maintain focus, Unsubscribe provides a refreshing roadmap to reclaim control over your time and attention. This book is a must-read for boosting productivity and reducing digital stress—definitely deserving of five stars.

[Julianna Welker · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unsubscribe appears to be useful, but as you begin reading it, seems to be written by an old woman who is upset with the existence of technology. Most of her tips for managing clutter seem to be to move the discussion offline, which doesn't work for a vast number of people suffering from inbox clutter, such as the small business owners taking orders in large numbers. The opening of the book only furthers the notion of anger with technology, making the claim that utility is the last thing one thinks of when they think of email. For me, and many of my peers, utility is the primary thought of email. It provides a faster system than the post service to get the same information across. Overall, this book feels stuck in the past, and in my opinion, should be left there as well.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this book is framed around email, the lessons here apply to all asynchronous communication. I was already clued into the concept of “deep work” by the time I found this book, but I found this book very practical - there’s an appendix with a large selection of scripts for email replies - and, dare I say, relaxing.

I found this book by Googling “email anxiety”, and from that perspective, it didn’t disappoint. The first part of the book explains the psychology of email addiction, and gave me language for understanding why email/Slack messages/work in general made me feel and behave they way they did (and still do, to an extent), which in turn helped me find language to get myself out of traps.

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that make you say, "I wish I had read this sooner." I was pleased to see that it affirmed some of my beliefs already (such as it isn't humanly possible to read every single e-mail that I receive). I thought the greatest value were the sample e-mails and correspondence in this book. Another great feature, is the book is a fast read. So, you don't have to spend excessive time reading this book to be starting to apply it's advice and techniques right away. This is the kind of book I want to share with all of my colleagues. It lives up to the title and is a book that is very useful.

[Leesgoodfood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this and found some very useful points. One of the author's other books had been recommended by a work colleague, but this was the one I could find.
ThIs book includes simple explanations, useful tips and actions steps, focused around about taking control of our technology (email, online calendars, etc.), and arranging time for ourselves for what the author calls "meaningful work", whether it is working towards your mission, project goals, or developing your skills.
An easy read, concise and helpful.

[Cyndie Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed this! Not only did it have some good tips in it that I had never heard before (I particularly like the one about thinking about groups of people who are sending you email VIPs/urgent/fun/potentials/other can help you triage your email) but it also contained some of the favorite tips I had encountered and even some I had worked out on my own (such as sorting email into files based on specific life priorities and batch processing those at the times I have assigned for that priority). Would definitely recommend!

[Terry Constable · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, short book on how to handle email (and all electronic communications) better and to think more about electronic communication as a medium that we tend to take for granted. Much of her advice was more relevant to the entrepreneur or small business person, but I still got a lot out of the book and enjoyed her easy to read style. The last portion of the book is some thoughts on how to do common responses and I found that very useful even in a corporate environment.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super sharp, with clear summaries at the end of each chapter, I already feel less stressed implementing the proposed strategies.

Nailed the issue of email management for me, as I work in a large corporations with a heap of corporate emails and subscriptions and tonnes of team emails to keep in top of. If you don’t have a job in a company, you don’t need this book as you just won’t face the daily email tsunami.

[Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good tips but not enough to justify the amount of paper this book consumed :-)

I did like (and am attempting) the idea of confining email viewing and responding to scheduled points I think the day and nothing else. And then telling people that's how I work.

The inbox when ready chrome plugin is pretty baller if you're a Gmail user.

[Larkin Tackett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has already changed my email behavior by encouraging me to block two windows during the day, not to check first thing in the AM or as frequently, and to treat email like snail mail. The author writes, "... all meaningful work, all creative acts, emerge from our ability to focus the ultimate technology, the human mind, on realizing a single goal." I'm already more focused.

[Jeramey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite coming in at around 200 pages, this book takes only about a hour to read. Lots of common sense advice, but I can't imagine this will be world changing for anyone. That said, with the small time commitment required to read the book I was still able to find a few things I can do to improve my productivity.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some incredibly good food for thought

I’ve struggled with email for a long time and I loved Unsubscribe because it took an ideal (spend less time email and more time creating) and made it feel like something i can actually accomplish because of its practical approach to solving that problem.

[harsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice book about emails and dealing with tons of emails in this digital age but nothing profound was said in this book. This book directly or indirectly covers topics like productivity, focus, flow state, dealing with people in different situations via the medium of email. It has some interesting email templates as well.