Daniel Lemire's blog

, 1 min read

How do I automatically lock myself out of Google Mail?

I want to be locked out of Google Mail if I spent more than X hours in a given day on email. Anyhow knows how to do it?

Right now, I spend about two to three hours (as measured by rescuetime) on mail.google.com. Of course, not all of it is random chatting:

  • I mark student assignments in mail.google.com. Yes! I actually give feedback to my students by email. No paper involved!
  • I receive warnings in mail.google.com about any change a collaborator made to a shared file.
  • Many administrative duties translate into email processing. Back when I was chairing the master degree in IT, I would accept or turn down students based on an electronic c.v. sent by email.

Then about three to four hours of my day is spent on actual research work. The rest of my work day (one or two hours) is usually invested in blogging, browsing web sites, surfing on wikipedia, and so on.