Researchers have established a clear link between spending time on email and stress: the more frequently we check our email, the more frazzled we feel.Meanwhile, office workers check their inboxes 74 times a day and spend 28% of their workday on reading and responding to email.

The Email Story

<ul><li>Set aside 30-60 minutes in the late morning and a similar amount of time in the mid- to late afternoon for checking email.</li><li>Turn off notifications and don't check email throughout the day.</li><li>Just having your email program open in the background of your computer screen as you focus on another task can decrease performance.</li><li>Avoid such distractions by quarantining your email in a separate area from your main workspace.</li></ul>

Tips To Check Email

<ul><li>The rule of reciprocity states that if someone does a favor for you, you want to return the favor even if the favor wasn’t something you wanted.</li><li>Numerous experiments have shown that humans tend to adhere to the rule of reciprocity in social interactions.</li><li>When emails start piling up, you begin to feel stressed out.</li></ul>

The Rule Of Reciprocity

<ul><li>Inbox Zero is a state when you have answered or filed all your email and there are no new unread messages.</li><li>Chipping away at our inbox gives us a sense of satisfaction precisely because the act includes such clear progress indicators.</li><li>Progress is one of the most motivating forces known to humankind.</li><li>Email inboxes make progress so visible which is another reason why email is so attractive.</li></ul>

Why Inbox Zero is Irresistible

<ul><li>When you don’t know if you’ll get a big reward, small reward, or no reward at all - that's when you are most likely to repeat a behavior and slip into addiction.</li><li>Email is a near-perfect random reward system.</li><li>Random rewards make us want to check email repeatedly in the hope of a reward.</li></ul>

Why Email is So Addictive

<ul><li>Every time you stop doing a task you are working on to check your email, you incur what researchers call a “switching cost”.</li><li>It typically takes at least 25 minutes to get properly back into the task after you’ve interrupted yourself.</li><li>The more frequently you check email, the less productive you are and the less happy you are.</li></ul>

The Switching Costs

Our negativity bias toward email means that every email we send or read is interpreted more negatively than it was intended, which is one of the reasons why more email tends to equate more stress.The lack of social cues in email also forces us to spend more time trying to interpret what the sender meant: Are they angry? Are they satisfied? Should I apologize?

Why Email is Stressful

The best way to get less email is to send less email. A great way to do this is to proactively close the conversation as soon as it’s convenient. This means always striving to respond to emails completely, cutting off the possibility of a long back-and-forth.Do a bit more work when you send or reply to emails.

Closing The Email Loop

The average person checks email 77 times a day, sends and receives more than 122 email messages a day and spends nearly a third of their workweek managing a constant influx of email. Even when we're away from work, checking email is the most popular activity we engage in on our mobile devices. Email is a powerful and essential tool - but it has become a near-constant source of frustration, anxiety and distraction from our work. In this insightful and intensely practical book, Jocelyn K. Glei explains why email is so overwhelming and addicting, and lays out strategies for limiting the energy you spend on it. These include setting meaningful work goals, clarifying to yourself which people and messages truly matter and creating a daily routine that aligns with your natural creative rhythms. Through her actionable, thoughtful advice, Glei will help you to: - Stop letting email dictate your mood, your focus and your to-do list - Process your inbox efficiently - Compose messages that get people to take action - Establish boundaries that allow you to engage in more meaningful work.

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Productivity

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Personal Development

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Books

The average person checks email 77 times a day, sends and receives more than 122 email messages a day and spends nearly a third of their workweek managing a constant influx of email. Even when we're away from work, checking email is the most popular activity we engage in on our mobile devices. Email is a powerful and essential tool - but it has become a near-constant source of frustration, anxiety and distraction from our work. This book explains why email is so overwhelming and addicting, and lays out strategies for limiting the energy you spend on it. These include setting meaningful work goals, clarifying to yourself which people and messages truly matter and creating a daily routine that aligns with your natural creative rhythms.