Why Email Has Become Dangerous

mikkl666 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald runs an interesting story dealing with a study about email user behavior, explaining how and why email can be a terrible distraction: 'It takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email. So people who check their email every five minutes waste 8 1/2 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.' Email is also compared to slot machines in the way it works psychologically: 'So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful — an invite out or maybe some juicy gossip — and I get a reward.' There are also some hints offered on how to keep control of the inbox, for those of us already addicted."

Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like this..

with regards to comment sites!

Now, WTF was I doing....

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

Slashdot wastes far more time than e-mail :D

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

Slashdot is merely the tool for my shovel leaning. Seriously, what were we doing? Don't remember...

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

The best/worst part of TFA (and I couldn't really keep myself reading after this pile of crap) is this:

Mr Reynolds has even begun to think of email as rude and invasive, preferring to use tools such as Twitter and Flickr. He also uses social networking sites such as Dopplr, which tracks people's travel, to find out if they are away before he contacts them, and status alerts from instant messenger or Twitter to help him decide if now is a good time to interrupt them. Other tools, such as blogs and wikis, have decreased the amount of email that he sends and receives, while RSS feeds and recommendations from friends and colleagues allow him to keep abreast of the most important news.

How the heck is checking multiple social networking sites, blogs and RSS feeds going to be any less distracting or addictive than having one place to check all your messages? Using multiple sites in such a manner means that every single message you send then becomes a mini adventure in itself, which is a surefire way to lose your train of thought. And since when was sending someone an email 'interrupting' them? Email will only interrupt you if you have a client open and set to alert you, or have been stupid enough to leave email enabled on your phone while doing whatever it is that requires you not to be interrupted.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

Yes: Email is also compared to slot machines in the way it works psychologically: "So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful â" an invite out or maybe some juicy gossip â" and I get a reward." There are also some hints offered on how to keep control of the inbox, for those of us already addicted."

My sentiments regarding slashdot!

Re:I always get my reward

I don't think email is any more distracting that talking ...in fact, I find it less so. I do at times carry on almost real time conversations on email, it is quiet (no one else in cube land can hear what you're saying). But, if someone comes to talk to me....the conversation at times goes on longer than needed, and not everyone takes the hint that you are finished and leave...

Nice thing with email, it is asynchronous, you can leave a conversation hanging if you have to do something else which is more difficult to do conversing in person or on the phone.

While I know that supposedly only old people in korea use email, I find it one of my best tools for conversing with people, often multiple ones at the same time. And since nowhere I've ever worked allowed IMs due to security reasons, I've never really used them. But, pretty much everywhere has email...

Hey

I check my e-mail more often than every five minutes and I

What? What was I doing?

Re:Hey

Wasting time on slashdot, damnit quit wasting your wasting time time!

Email is the best

As far as not interrupting work, email is better than any other medium because I can choose when to read the message. That is not true if someone calls me, or walks into my cube.

Re:Email is the best

People call me telling they are going to send a mail.

I used to check my mail two or 3 times a day, but where I work now it is a 'must' to respond immediately on every mail. Only half the work is done.

I guess the only people actually working is IT to keep the mail server up and running.

Re:Email is the best

I don't usually respond to ACs, but I can't pass this up...

I am one of those people that insist on communicating via email. Here are my reasons:

1) Workflow and queueing: everything I work on MUST be listed and prioritized in our request database. It is part of my job description. I have been instructed by my direct supervisor to only work on projects that have an official request in the database, period. Any updates to the work being done are also entered into the database as running comments. If a person sends me an email about a project I can enter that information into the database just as it was sent and not have to try to remember every detail of a telephone conversation. This method makes it easier for me to make sure that what the user wants is what they will actually get.

2) Time Savings: I have found that if a user is forced to type out their requests via email or directly into a database of some sort that they will be far more succinct than if they are involved in a conversation. I don't ever remember receiving an email request where the first 4 paragraphs are "how's it going?" or "this is what has been going on in my life recently" or "did you hear about the new person in Accounting? I heard they came here from blah blah blah."

3) Historical record: again, trying to remember details of telephone conversations over the span of a project, even if decent notes are taken, will almost certainly lead to something getting missed. I have had the experience several times in my career of having a user insist that they told me a certain tidbit of information when in fact they had not. I have also had the experience where the user actually DID tell me something and I just plain forgot. Having a reference record in the form of saved emails makes this much less likely to occur. There is also the "Cover Your Backside" benefit. Like it or not, at some time in your career you WILL have to defend something you did or did not do, and having the email trail to back you up helps tremendously.

So, you can call me a grumpy old codger, or whatever the current vernacular requires, but I will continue to insist that business communications occur via email. Now you kids get off my lawn!

Twitter? ROFL

I agree with most of the article, but here's one that makes me ROFL:

Mr Reynolds has even begun to think of email as rude and invasive, preferring to use tools such as Twitter

Yeah, right! And did you know that heroin was invented because doctors in the 19th century thought morphine was too addictive?

I get dinged on that at every "review".

Fortunately, I don't care about reviews any more.

I use email because:
#1. It is self-documenting. If you ask me the same question next week, I'll forward you the email I sent you last week.

#2. It is self-documenting. If you want to claim that you didn't agree with something next week, I'll forward you the email where you did agree with it last week.

#3. It requires a LOT more thought than talking. That means that people have to THINK about what they want to say rather than calling me and uh, well, I was, uh, that thing, it, uh, was, uh ....... Why waste MY time for YOU to get YOUR thoughts in order?

#4. It allows me to send you lists like this. I can identify each point and if you have points to add, you can add them. You can reply to my points, by number.

#5. All of the above WHEN IT IS CONVENIENT FOR ME. (and when you consider it convenient for you). You have a RECORD that YOU involved me. Now the ball is in my court. I will get to it as soon as I deal with the issues that are more important. And I expect the same from you.

FUCK "immediate human contact". The people I've encountered are (generally) not pre-disposed to clear communication. They are easily distracted and LOVE personal anecdotes and trivia. That's fine when I'm at lunch or grabbing coffee or whatever. NOT when I'm trying to fix a problem before it impacts the entire company.

When I'm working, I am WORKING. I expect the same from you.

Put it in email. That way we'll have documentation for who was involved in the decision, what the decision was, why we decided that way, what criteria we considered and what options we discarded.

If we have a "face to face" meeting, then SOMEONE is going to have to take notes about that and THEN write up those notes and get everyone's sign-off on them so they can be used as documentation.

My current CIO hates the way I use email. I believe it is because he hates having a papertrail of his decisions.

You were already wasting time..

If you're checking your email hoping for an "invite out" or "juicy gossip," the time you are on probably isn't very valuable before anyway. In a business environment, you aren't wasting time, you're communicating. Not taking in to account organizational spam, of course.

Dot dot dot.

Lets just throw in that distracting "talking" thing which many people are utterly addicted to. They waste hours every day talking or being talked at. Many love to exchange lots of gossip and when they hear something juicy or tell a joke and their reward center is triggered by another talker reacting positively they get a buzz like with a slot machine and it can be terrible for your concentration.

Sorry, not waste

So people who check their email every five minutes waste 8 1/2hours a week

This argument is essentially flawed: It does not take into account the time *saved* by checking the email every five minutes.

If I get an email from my boss he might need an immediate answer, otherwise it is *his* time (more expensive) that is wasted if he needs an answer before he can do something.

And this also applies for my colleagues.

Plus since I don't have to idle while they answer, I make up for that 'wasted' time the article mentions.

Please don't listen to this crap, if you don't want to waste time on email just ignore those powerpoints with music and flowers, but do read the work emails as soon as possible.

Re:Sorry, not waste

EMail is intended to be asynchronous

Work email should have decent round-trip times.

If your boss needs an immediate answer, he should walk over and talk to you, or pick up the phone.

Yes, because a phone call is less of an interruption than a quick email. In fact a phone call is likely to interrupt if not annoy other people as well, and anyway if my boss calls me I'm going to say 'I'll check it and get back to you' anyway (my boss doesn't call to ask the time).

If something is urgent, I get my butt out of my chair and walk over to the person who has the info.

There's a difference between 'urgent' and 'as soon as you can'. I don't expect people to get out from a meeting to answer an email, and I think everyone's entitled to take a piss without being called on their cell. However, if they are on their desk and not doing something really urgent, I appreciate that they don't have long email checking cycles.

By the way, I never email non work stuff to work addresses. I do have friends at work of course but if I send them something that is not related to work I use their personal addresses.

Push Email!

This is why push email is so good. You don't (or don't need to) be hovering around your inbox like a dog wanting to get a treat. On my Blackberry, I setup filters and blocks so only the important emails come through, while the regular 'crap' stays on my inbox. It's still distracting (unless you turn on silent), but it still distracts a LOT less than checking your email every few minutes...

Are you guys serious?

TFA and some comments keep mentioning "checking email every 5 minutes".

Don't you use email clients that check for new email automatically every 5 minutes and tells you if a new email has arrived? If you need to manually click a "get new emails" button every 5 minutes then I suggest you find a better program.

In fact I've never seen an email client that couldn't do this, so what gives?

The bain of instant messaging

I work in a corporate culture where if you are not available via
instant messaging, many perceive is that you are not really working at
the time. I know several people who wake up in the morning and the
first thing they do is connect via the VPN to get their instant
messaging client running so that their bosses and coworkers think
they are working diligently. I work best by batching tasks via email
messages, so I make it clear to people to just send me an email and I
will get back to them within a day or so. This does not work for some
people; one person in my organization will try instant messaging me
and calling my office phone, but he will not bother to send me an
email, and then he will later complain that he cannot communicate with
me.

As a software engineer, I remain productive by having several hours of
uninterrupted time to focus on a particular task at hand. When the
code builds, installs, tests, and is in the repo ready for the next
release, then I am ready to move on to the next task, like check my
email, which I do maybe two or three times a day. I am able to give my
code the due attention it deserves, and I can concentrate on not
making coding mistakes by keeping the entire code context "swapped in"
my head while I am working on it. During that time, invariably some
project manager somewhere is panicking about a status report or some
other overhead and is trying to get me to update a bug ticket or
something. Usually, by the time I read his frantic email about the
status report, I have already fixed the problem that he wants status
on because I was able to focus on it without interruption.

Most people eventually figure out that they get good consistent work
from me regardless of the fact that they cannot interrupt me freely at
any time, like most other employees in my organization. I do wish that
more of my coworkers would take a more proactive stance on not letting
themselves get interrupted all the time, since I see first-hand the
negative impact it has on their ability to function. I get annoyed
when I am trying to talk to my boss during a meeting and he stammers
right in the middle of an important discussion with, "Uh, wait, I just
got am IM, I, uh, need to, uh, just a second, let me think..."

Oh brother

This is bean-counter doomsdayer mentality. These are the same bozo's that try to quantify how much time you spend tuning your radio to a station or watching TV and the like. You can't get that time back. People simply aren't going to sit at a desk and use every second of their work day doing robotic activity, get over it. Humankind has already decided that the benefits of email are viable regardless. People like this either need a life or a place to go that's really quiet so they can count grains of sand in a jar.

Dangerous?

Unless you are firefighter stopping in the middle of five-alarm fire, a cop, or an EMT, etc., I don't really think a distraction from work is "dangerous". Just an incendiary word thrown into the title to make people read the article or visit the site. Lame.

Visiting slashdot is now dangerous, too. Luckily, it is only sometimes lame.

Good to see news that's only 6 years old re-posted

The study that talks about the 64 second recovery time was published in *2002*. How is this news today??!

Oh, and it included an astounding 16 subjects that worked at one company.

Yeah, that's good data to base generalized conclusions on about all email usage and behavior.

Re:Don't check your email

The ideal is not to do that, because you will stop doing what you were doing and start doing something else.

The best is to have fixed times during the day as to where you launch your email client and answer all the mails in there and then CLOSE your client again.

I used to do it two or three times a day. Morning, to get starting, right after luch and an hour before leaving to see if anything MUST be done immediately. Most of the time it could wait till the next morning. Sometimes it was 1 mail and exceptionally 2 mails that needed action or a reply.

And more often then not, not responding to an email would solve the problem by itself.

Re:load of BS

but when you are an engeneer who uses the computer all
Four years ago I didn't even know how to SPELL engeneer and now I ARE one!