Stop checking email in the morning
Email can be a great tool. It is hard to imagine, for example, academic collaborations without email. But email can also have harmful effects.
Constantly switching between emails and other tasks can cause you to lose focus. Answering emails quickly may give the impression that you are doing a good job, but emails are such a distraction that they can significantly reduce productivity.
Email creates anxiety and stress
More damningly, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that electronic mail is taking its toll on mental health. In one study, participants were asked to turn off their email for a week while wearing heart rate monitors, a validated measure of stress. The heart rate measurements showed that participants felt less stress when they turned off their email than when they continued to use their email, even when other communication channels were still available. Another study found that longer daily time spent on email correlated with lower perceived productivity and higher measured stress levels. All this evidence points to only one conclusion: email is the most stressful form of communication, and reducing your time spent on email can only make your life better.
To avoid constantly checking my emails, I make a conscious effort to spend my mornings without glancing at them, although it can be challenging. I wish there was a technological solution to this problem, such as an app that could prevent me from checking my inbox in the morning.
Keep email for the afternoon
To manage this issue, I have taken a more public approach by forming a group of individuals who also strive to avoid checking email in the morning. We call ourselves the “afternoon emailers” and have a dedicated webpage (available here: https://www.juliencayla.com/afternoonemailers).
At the beginning of each semester, I also educate my students on the negative effects of email and promote alternative modes of communication. For instance, I created a Telegram channel for my class where students can ask questions, and I only check those exchanges once a day. Additionally, I schedule times to meet with students at a café for informal discussions about the course. Finally, I inform my students that I may take a while to respond to their emails, even if they send them late at night.
Several colleagues have expressed to me that they find it impractical to limit their email checking to the afternoon due to the pressing nature of administrative tasks and student inquiries.
This issue is exacerbated at my institution by the heightened expectation for swift email responses, with some colleagues striving to reply to student emails within an hour. This creates the toxic expectation that rapid email communication is the norm. Unfortunately, this also sends the wrong message to students, who may mistakenly assume that quickly responding to emails is the best way to excel in the workplace.
Ultimately, though, there’s plenty of research to prove that email stresses people out. So here are five different ways you can reduce email anxiety:
Set specific times to check email: Instead of constantly checking email throughout the day, set specific times to check and respond to email. This can help prevent you from feeling like you are constantly available and free up more time for other tasks.
Use a separate email for personal and work emails: having a separate email for personal and work emails can help reduce the stress that comes from mixing the two.
Keep it short and simple: When composing emails, keep them short and to the point. Avoid long-winded messages that can be confusing and time-consuming to read.
Communicate in alternative ways: Consider alternative forms of communication, such as phone calls, video chats or face-to-face meetings. This can help reduce email traffic and the stress associated with it.
Set clear expectations and boundaries: make it clear to people you work with that checking email too often can be harmful and that you will keep specific times for email.
Try it for a week and see how this routine affects your mood. It would be great to create an academic world with less emailing. One can only hope.
References
Barley, Stephen R., Debra E. Meyerson, and Stine Grodal. “E-mail as a source and symbol of stress.” Organization Science 22, no. 4 (2011): 887–906.
Kostadin Kushlev and Elizabeth W. Dunn. 2015. Checking email less frequently reduces stress. Computers in Human Behavior, 43, 220–228.
Mark, Gloria, Shamsi T. Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski, Paul Johns, Akane Sano, and Yuliya Lutchyn. “Email duration, batching and self-interruption: Patterns of email use on productivity and stress.” In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems, pp. 1717–1728. 2016.
Mark, Gloria, Stephen Voida, and Armand Cardello. “” A pace not dictated by electrons” an empirical study of work without email.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, pp. 555–564. 2012.
Newport, Cal. Digital minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world. Penguin, 2019.