What the researchers found was that the typical diversion caused by an e-mail was nine minutes and 30 seconds in length. Now that was just the time spent on the e-mail itself. After that, it still took the participants of the study another 16 minutes to resume their primary task. That’s a lot of lost time.
Not only does e-mail hinder our ability to accomplish the essential aspects of our workday it also contributes to the overall stress we feel about our job. Even going so far as to impact our ability to maintain and develop good relationships at work. —The Next Web.
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Email is a communication medium. Use it as such. Delete the irrelevant, focus on the relevant. Be brutally frank with yourself when perusing your inbox. If you choose to use email as a diversion, do so without guilt. Who’s to say that the 9:30 was spent well or ill? – You!
Good point! The experiment presumes that email is a distraction from a “primary task,” and a thorough answer to that email may very we’ll assist a “primary task” in the real world. Still, when I am fighting a deadline, I do need to prioritize, and saving routine emails to answer in batches works for me. A couple times a day, answering email becomes my primary task.