How to Send E-mail Without Checking E-mail

We all know that e-mail is one of the great distractions of our profession, a never-ending source of things to do other than the thing you really should be doing. We’ve certainly written a lot about e-mail a lot here at ProfHacker. A lot of the advice people give about e-mail boils down to, check it less frequently, and process it sensibly. But if you want to send off an e-mail, say to a class list or to a collaborator, you have to open your e-mail program and check your mail. What happens next? You’re doing whatever is in your inbox because you can’t help yourself.

But if you’re a user of Gmail, there’s a simple solution. Open this URL, then bookmark it. Now you can open a compose e-mail window and hit send, all without having to see anything in your inbox.

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&shva=1

To give credit where credit is due, I got this idea from Merlin Mann in an episode of Back to Work.

What tips do you have for using e-mail efficiently? Please share in the comments.

The image is a screen shot by the author.