Breaking the Email Obsession

Source: Harvard Business Review Published: January 2019

Source: Harvard Business Review
Published: January 2019

Breaking the Email Obsession

Circulated: January 15, 2020

The average professional spends 28% of the work day reading and answering email — that amounts to 2.6 hours spent and 120 messages received per day. Professionals check their email inbox an average of 15 times per day, or every 37 minutes, yet only 8% of coworkers expect a response within an hour.

Practices to break the inbox habit:

• Turn off notifications and instead check your email hourly.

• Move every email out of your inbox the first time you read it.

• Use the search functionality with search operators to re-find emails.

• Avoid processing irrelevant or less important emails individually by setting up rules.