Thought checking your email constantly at work hurt your work performance? Well, according to recent research, email checking causes stress in many workers.
Surprising? No, not really. Whenever people feel driven to do something, they feel a certain amount of stress or pressure associated with …
Before posting, please read our blog moderation guidelines. The comments below begin with the oldest comments first. Click on the last comments page to jump to the most recent comments.
Before posting, please read our blog moderation guidelines.
Post a Comment:
Copyright © 1995-2013 Psych Central. All rights reserved.
Site last updated: 19 Jun 2013
|
Great post. I was interviewed several times by newspapers and radio stations in the UK about this research. What was fascinating by the tone of the questions I was asked is how emailing appears to have replaced “water cooler conversation” or chats in the corridor. People don’t appear to be viewing email as a replacement for memos, letters or other printed communication. They seem, from the tone of questions I was asked by journalists, to be viewing email as chat. For this reason, the sensible advice of checking twice a day – the same advice I gave in my interviews – might not work. Indeed, I know of people in my studies who suffer severe stress if they do not check their emails every couple of minutes. To them it is like being ignored by people in the office.
I just changed my e-mail settings to check for messages from “Every 1 minute” to “Every 15 minutes.”
I’d advise rather the opposite – check your e-mail as regulary as possible so to deal with the new items bit by bit as they come along. Otherwise you’d be confronted with a huge pile, and believe me, it could be quite panic-striking to see the INBOX(20) “urgent”-s.