Before bathroom, before toothbrushing, or you eat, you check your e-mail. Your family and friends are pleading with you to end spending so much time in front of the pc screen. Seem familiar? Email addiction is quick to get hooked into, because it operates on the system of random reward. Dog trainers know the fastest way to change a dog's habits is to reward him appropraiately for the sought after changes.

We check our inbox for a reward: a communication from a loved one, a critical answer to a tech question, a random surprise that can improve our day. Sounds totally reasonable. And it is. Yet the very structure of how we receive these communications reinforces the intermittent reward system and plugs right into our animal brain. We page through piles of useless E-mail looking for that gold nugget.

Here are 5 simple tricks to help you if you fear you are an Email addict. The idea is to get the process of stimulus/random reward interrupted.

1. Identify the extent of your habit. How much time do you spend in front of your E mail? How much time reading through what is essentially junk and time wasters? It's critical to recognize and assess the actual impact it is having on your daily life.

2. Use features in your mail program like filters to automatically select out and remove from your attention any non-essential mail. Employ labels and folders to collect legitimate letters such as friends, family, business related, work associates. Then you will not be combing through junk to get to valid E mails. I have several categories that bypass my inbox and go straight into the trash. This closes the gap between the "sometimes" rewards so your experiences become more predictable.

3. Set a realistic block of Email time, perhaps divided into 2 or more 15-45 minute daily sessions. Set an an alarm if you must, to be sure you do not go over the time. After awhile you will adjust the total time to meet the need.

4. Using your E mail program features, figure out how to separate your letters into categories of "action needed" and "information". Attend to action needed Email right away. Save your information E-mail to do all at once later.

5. Take back the phone! Handle everything you can by phone. Let your correspondents know you want to use Email to set phone appointments rather than electronically. Bring back the human contact this may be replacing in your life. That human contact is one of the needs that may be feeding the obsession with E mail.

6. Your transformation will profit from a loving but firm approach. Be firm to limit your E posts to planned times. If you have an extensive project with a deadline, try shutting your Email down for periods to find out if you will accomplish more. Tell eveyone you choose to not to let the demand of Email control your daylight hours. For urgent issues, call you on the phone. Reward yourself with real human contact.