Work-Life Balance experiment 1 – setting email response times

So in this first post about my experiments with work-life balance and automation (based in part upon the very interesting read 4-hour work week), I’ve implemented a periodic email checking system.
What I’ve done is set my vacation autoresponder in gmail to let people know I’ll be checking my email on a specific schedule, instead of immediately and continuously.
Here’s what I’ve got now:

Hello!
Rest assured that I’ve gotten your mail.
I’m currently checking my email periodically, at 9am, 12pm and 4pm. I will be responding during those times. If this is an emergency, and you have a support contract, you can contact me as usual.
Thank you for understanding this move to more efficiency and effectiveness. It helps me accomplish more to serve you better.

It’s been working well, better than I expected in fact. People have become much less freaked if I don’t respond to them immediately, and sometimes emergencies turn out not to be. Noone has had any difficulty with this, which I had been concerned about.

It’s amazing how much less stress I feel, and once I got used to it, how nice it was not to ALWAYS be checking and responding to email. AND, it’s much more efficient – it takes less time to answer 5 emails at one time, than 5 individually. Time spent on other things, whether working on a project, or spending time with my granddaughter is a much less stressful and more pleasant experience without that worry.
So, I call this a Success!.