Why Email Has Become Dangerous

mikkl666 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald runs an interesting story dealing with a study about email user behavior, explaining how and why email can be a terrible distraction: 'It takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email. So people who check their email every five minutes waste 8 1/2 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.' Email is also compared to slot machines in the way it works psychologically: 'So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful — an invite out or maybe some juicy gossip — and I get a reward.' There are also some hints offered on how to keep control of the inbox, for those of us already addicted."

Comments

Re:Don't check your email

[houghi]

The ideal is not to do that, because you will stop doing what you were doing and start doing something else.

The best is to have fixed times during the day as to where you launch your email client and answer all the mails in there and then CLOSE your client again.

I used to do it two or three times a day. Morning, to get starting, right after luch and an hour before leaving to see if anything MUST be done immediately. Most of the time it could wait till the next morning. Sometimes it was 1 mail and exceptionally 2 mails that needed action or a reply.

And more often then not, not responding to an email would solve the problem by itself.

Re:I always get my reward

[cayenne8]

I don't think email is any more distracting that talking ...in fact, I find it less so. I do at times carry on almost real time conversations on email, it is quiet (no one else in cube land can hear what you're saying). But, if someone comes to talk to me....the conversation at times goes on longer than needed, and not everyone takes the hint that you are finished and leave...

Nice thing with email, it is asynchronous, you can leave a conversation hanging if you have to do something else which is more difficult to do conversing in person or on the phone.

While I know that supposedly only old people in korea use email, I find it one of my best tools for conversing with people, often multiple ones at the same time. And since nowhere I've ever worked allowed IMs due to security reasons, I've never really used them. But, pretty much everywhere has email...