No Thanks, I’ll just wait for the plane.

About a month ago, I traded in my brick of a “smart phone” for a brand new “dumb phone”. “Give me the slimmest and slickest phone you have,” I said.

I originally became a Blackberry user when I was a sophomore in College. As I ran around campus going from class to class, I thumbed through my Blackberry attempting to manage a thriving telecommunications business at the same time. Since graduating College and becoming a Product Manager at Plaxo, I upgraded to Windows Mobile, more information the better I thought. I thought I needed to have instant up-to-date access to my Outlook Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Notes.

And then one day…. frustrated with my uncontrollable Inbox, I decided to do some fact finding. I came to the realization that I send out an average of about 45+ emails a day. On top of that, a ton of them were just one liners that were sent from my mobile device as I was running from the restroom to lunch to the next conference call. A little more fact finding showed that those one liners just resulted in even more back and forth and even more sent emails! This was just absurd, I decided it just had to end.

This all has to do with a grand initiative I have going in my life where I am systematically eradicating any sort of information overload. It’s all about eliminating the 80% noise, and attempting to focus on the 20% that is actually making a difference. Some of it has to do with my own personal goals, and others are related to some new ideas I’ve been reading about in this book called The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris.

I’ll admit, I was not able to quit cold turkey. I do keep the GMail App on my phone, just when I need a quick fix and make sure that everything is still “Okay.” I also keep the new Plaxo Mobile in my favorites list. When I really need it, Plaxo gives me instant access to my Outlook Calendar and Address Book (this has been incredibly helpful during business trips).

I’m getting a lot better though, and there is still some work left to do. I’m still on a quest to reduce the # of emails sent per day. The real challenge will be to get to the point where I am checking my email only twice a day and handling it in batches. Yes, it is possible, and yes, you will deal with it.