{"id":10974,"date":"2015-01-14T09:52:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T14:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=10974"},"modified":"2015-01-14T09:52:31","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T14:52:31","slug":"between-the-lines-youve-got-e-mail-lots-of-them-but-dont-check-it-so-often","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/editors-blog\/2015\/01\/between-the-lines-youve-got-e-mail-lots-of-them-but-dont-check-it-so-often\/","title":{"rendered":"Between the Lines: You\u2019ve Got E-mail, Lots of It, But Don\u2019t Check It so Often"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mobile\"There was an intriguing column in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times<\/em> about an experiment that will be published in next month\u2019s issue of the journal Computers in Human Behavior<\/em>.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cAn 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

I certainly understand the connection between e-mail and stress. That\u2019s why I don\u2019t check e-mails on weekends and some work e-mails I don\u2019t open until after I\u2019ve taken care of some of my more grueling writing assignments each morning. That\u2019s not always possible, but I try to stick to that rule with the occasional exception. There are a couple of reasons for that; I\u2019m not very good at turning it off if there\u2019s an issue, which can affect my focus when I should be writing, or if it\u2019s on the weekend, it tends to ruin it because I can\u2019t 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\u2019t be fully resolved until the weekend is over.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t 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\u2019s good to know I\u2019m 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\u2019s access to e-mail would be a good practice for some.<\/p>\n

Okay, got to go. It\u2019s time to check my e-mail for the fourth time today. And it\u2019s only 7:56 in the morning.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s issue of the journal Computers in Human Behavior.\u00a0 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. \u00a0The 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, \u201cAn 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.\u201d I certainly understand the connection between e-mail and stress. That\u2019s why I don\u2019t check e-mails on weekends and some work e-mails I don\u2019t open until after I\u2019ve taken care of some of my more grueling writing assignments each morning. That\u2019s not always possible, but I try to stick to that rule with the occasional exception. There are a couple of reasons for that; I\u2019m not very good at turning it off if there\u2019s an issue, which can affect my focus when I should be writing, or if it\u2019s on the weekend, it tends to ruin it because I can\u2019t 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\u2019t be fully resolved until the weekend is over. I didn\u2019t 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\u2019s good to know I\u2019m 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\u2019s access to e-mail would be a good practice for some. Okay, got to go. It\u2019s time to check my e-mail for the fourth time today. And it\u2019s only 7:56 in the morning. Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80,1638],"tags":[2040,2041,328],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10974"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10974"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10979,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10974\/revisions\/10979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}