The latest email issue to hit the headlines comes in the form of a health scare. The University of California, Irvine recently released a study on a work without emails which put in its simplest terms highlights the fact that people who frequently check their emails suffer higher levels of stress than those who don’t.
And as Chuck Klosterman of the New York Times wrote, there is also an excellent analogy between emails and zombies, saying that
“Every zombie war is a war of attrition. It’s always a numbers game. And it’s more repetitive than complex. In other words, zombie killing is philosophically similar to reading and deleting 400 work e-mails on a Monday morning”.
The trouble is that not only does it feel like you are fighting a zombie horde when clearing through your inbox, it also feels like you have become a zombie as your productive life ebbs’ away whilst you spend more and more of your time checking emails. With this communication overload it is far too easy to feel overwhelmed, become increasingly stressed and falling ill from the pressures of modern day life.
We live in a world where you are expected to be always contactable and that when someone does contact you, then they will inevitably expect an almost instantaneous response. When people are drawn to work from their inbox, checking it multiple times during the day - not only does their productivity decreases but their stress levels will inevitably increase.
Constantly checking your email is a disruptive habit and unfortunately the average person will check their email 50 to 70 times a day. It takes approximately 24 minutes to fully disconnect after reading your emails, so imagine how much time ends up getting wasted during the work day. The founder of TechCrunch, Michael Arrington is one such person to have experienced these stresses and has openly admitted to routinely declaring email bankruptcy. Peter Bregman is another who has experienced email overload and after taking a week’s technology vacation came back to find the expected overflowing inbox. Peter probably had the same feeling of dread that we all do after a period away from emails (mine included spitting coffee over my laptop), knowing that there will be a mountain of work to go through, but somehow he managed to clear a week’s worth of emails in only 3 hours.
The only issue is not that there is a continuous stream of communication coming your way, but also that it comes at you all of the time and this leads to its own issues. USA Today posted an article on workers suing for unpaid overtime, with the number of lawsuits increasing by 32% since 2008. I am sure you will be able to work out where this increase has came from, yes that is right, it is the evil zombie-esque horde of emails further invading people’s lives. Because of smartphones and other technology work is blending into personal time.
So what is the solution? One of our team has some great advice on How to keep a clean inbox that is well worth a read, but only a fraction of the real solution to the problem of overload. The question really becomes - will the solution be a change in behaviour, a change in technology or a change in the intelligence that surrounds our working lives? Please leave us your thoughts below on the best ways to keep our health (and of course to keep the zombies at bay!).
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