One of the greatest demands on our time is email, and so it is important to put it in proper perspective with the demands of our jobs. We have become a society where we expect replies to email immediately. Many people send emails out to more recipients and with more frequency than is often required.

While email is beneficial in many ways, it is also a huge contributor to people’s stress. And it is not enough to just be able to check an email on a computer somewhere; many managers have a smart phone or other device that allows them to be connected to their email 24/7.

Let’s see what kind of an impact email has on your day, in terms of time.

Let’s say that an average email takes up three minutes of your time (and that is only if they are short and need minimal thinking on your part).

It is not unusual for managers to receive, reply to, and create up to 100 emails per day. One hundred emails a day is equivalent to 300 minutes, or five hours of time each day!

Since we normally have lots of additional tasks in the day in addition to email, is it any wonder that we struggle to get through the day?

Extra Information

Here are some excellent tips for tackling your email.

Check your email twice a day.

Try first thing in the morning and again after lunch, or find two periods that work for you. This will stop your email from interrupting you over and over again, and allow you to get more done. You can set most email programs up to check for new messages on your schedule and turn the notifications off altogether so that you get to your mail when it makes sense for you to do so.

For those of you who are addicted to your email, this can be a hard switch to make. If you have trained people so that they know you answer emails 24/7, and always right away, you will have to adjust their expectations so that they know your new schedule. Try it for a week and then see just how much more relaxed your work pace becomes, and how much more you can accomplish.

Deal with each message right away.

Try to read an email only one time, and decide what you want to do with it as you read it. Our rule of thumb is that if it takes three minutes or less, reply immediately. Any longer than that means that you need to set it up as a task or in your calendar or delegate it to someone else. Do not leave emails open to answer when you get a chance. When we do this, we tend to have multiple messages open, and then we have to re-read all those open emails to decide what to do with them.

Deal with it the right way.

Consider whether email is the best way to deal with something, or whether another method is more efficient. Emails that go to large groups of people, have multiple strings of replies, or include a lot of information are often best dealt with in a meeting or a conference call.