[SatvikBeri]

It's pretty much entirely a matter of cultural expectation. At one job I'd get criticized for being "unavailable" because I took more than an hour to answer emails. Another job polled everyone (in tech) to find out when we did and didn't want meetings, and ended up with no meeting mornings (because people preferred multiple mornings to a few full days.) Guess where I got more work done?

[Consultant32452]

I cultivate the idea that you've got a 50/50 chance of successfully reaching me via email. There's 3 people whose emails go into a special folder I monitor regularly. Everyone else goes into the regular folders that gets skimmed once or twice a week. About once a day someone pings me on im to ask me to actually read an email they sent and then I do. It saves a ton of time.

[dorkwood]

I’ve always treated email more like a news feed than a to-do list. To me, stressing out over unread emails is like stressing out over “unread forum posts” or “unread news stories”. Does every email really deserve my attention?

[lev99]

Adding "What is an acceptable response time for emails?" to my list of interview questions.

[taylorjacobson]

I think we also have to be willing to push back. Answering emails provides a nice dopamine hit (check something off + people-pleasing), so it's both cultural and internal.

One of the ways I've been most successful blocking out time for focused work is booking accountability appointments on Focusmate (https://www.focusmate.com).

That reduces the amount of space in my schedule for distractions and emails to absorb.