There was an intriguing column in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times about an experiment that will be published in next month’s issue of the journal Computers in Human Behavior. Researchers are wondering if the frequency in which we check our e-mail leaves us stressed or emotionally drained. They cited one study that found that three quarters of workers said that they reply to e-mail within an hour or less of receiving it.
The study involving 124 adults was separated into two stages and two groups. The first group was asked during the first week of the study to limit the number of times they check their e-mail to three times a day while the other group was allowed to check it as often as they like. The second week the roles were reversed. Participants were then asked to report on their day at the end of each weekday of the study. The bottom line, those who checked their e-mail less frequently were less stressed than those who checked it more often.
One of the conclusions drawn by the researchers was that checking e-mail less often may reduce stress partly by reducing the need to switch between tasks. As the authors Kostandin Kushlev and Elizabeth W. Dunn write, “An unfortunate limitation of the human mind is that it cannot perform two demanding tasks simultaneously, so flipping back and forth between two different taps saps cognitive resources. As a result, people can become less efficient in each of the tasks they need to accomplish.”
I certainly understand the connection between e-mail and stress. That’s why I don’t check e-mails on weekends and some work e-mails I don’t open until after I’ve taken care of some of my more grueling writing assignments each morning. That’s not always possible, but I try to stick to that rule with the occasional exception. There are a couple of reasons for that; I’m not very good at turning it off if there’s an issue, which can affect my focus when I should be writing, or if it’s on the weekend, it tends to ruin it because I can’t stop obsessing over it. More often than not, if an issue pops up in an e-mail I read on the weekend, most of the time it can’t be fully resolved until the weekend is over.
I didn’t need to read an article in the Times to discover the relationship between checking e-mails and stress. I live it every day as we probably all do. Still, it’s good to know I’m not alone and although I would find it impossible to reduce the number of times I check my e-mail each day to three, I can understand why limiting one’s access to e-mail would be a good practice for some.
Okay, got to go. It’s time to check my e-mail for the fourth time today. And it’s only 7:56 in the morning.
Thanks for reading.
