They say Monday is the day you catch up on all those things from the weekend and that Tuesday is the day you really start working. Well, email may just have something to do with how unproductive Mondays can be.
Across a variety of studies, email is shown to reduce your ability to focus on important tasks for the period of time it takes to complete them. In one study, researchers showed that it took 64 seconds for people to recover a train of thought after checking a single email! With a 100 to 200 or more emails a day, that’s a lot of time and a related study says that checking email throughout the day makes it extremely difficult to “achieve the psychological flow” necessary to work on complex tasks.
Take a look at some of these other email statistics and see if email is killing you. (Thanks to PsyBlog, BNET, and others for this information):
- 59% check email from the bathroom
- You check your email more often than you think, on average, every five minutes
- 23% of the working day is spent on email
- People feel less cooperative via email
- 50% lie over email
The crazy thing is, as recent as these studies are; they were done before everyone got Blackberrys, iPhones, and Droids which almost undoubtedly makes these numbers even worse. Does this scare you? Check out these 7 easy tips for crushing email where it stands.
