Most of us are totally hooked on e‑mail. We couldn’t imagine life without it. If my Outlook isn’t flashing a preview of my latest e‑mail, my iPhone is buzzing.
I came across a really interesting article on e‑mail titled, “E‑mail’s Dark Side: 10 Psychology Studies.” Some interesting findings include:
You check more than you think. According to this study, participants claim to check their e‑mails, on average, once an hour. “However, when the researchers spied on them, it turned out they checked their e‑mail every five minutes.” I don’t know that I’m checking it that frequently but it’s certainly more than once an hour.
E‑mail eats a quarter of the working day. Researchers found that “this is because people are not just using e‑mail to communicate, they are also using it as a way of tracking tasks.” I guess I fall in that camp: Every day I create a task list for myself in Outlook and check it throughout the day to monitor if I’m on track.
It takes 64 seconds to recover from an e‑mail. Participants took about a minute to recover their train of thought after an interruption.
Low rapport when using e‑mail. My boss complains that no one uses the phone anymore. She has a point. Researchers found that “even a single telephone call can create enough good feeling between the parties to bridge the rapport gap.”
Here’s one of my pet peeves—delivering sensitive news by e‑mail. Occasionally, a colleague decides to deliver unpleasant news that could be upsetting using e‑mail. To make matters worse, they “cc” a bunch of people on the e‑mail. Is it too much to ask to deliver the information in person in a somewhat sensitive way? On a related note, one of the studies notes that “people tend to be more negative in e‑mail.”
Check out the study (external link).
I have worked as a
This is certainly an interesting study, Robert. I try not to let e‑mail take over my life but it’s an uphill battle. I try to ignore it but then I feel like I might be missing out. I’ve learned from experience that it’s much more successful to ask a favor over the phone or in person. E‑mail makes it too easy to say “no” or to just ignore. I wholeheartedly agree with your point about relaying sensitive information in an e‑mail. I know that telling someone bad news is difficult, but it was devastating to receive an e‑mail at work that a friend’s son had died. Talk about the dark side of e‑mail.
Thanks for sharing the information from this study, Robert. I’ve experimented with turning e‑mail off for a morning or even (gasp!) a whole day. It improves my productivity and concentration. I can’t do it all the time, but when I have work that I need to do in chunks, I do turn e‑mail off. The point about building rapport with phone calls is interesting. I think we often forget how much more we communicate with tone of voice, pauses, etc. Also, it is easier to spend a couple of minutes connecting on life stuff (how was your weekend) on the phone than in e‑mail.