July 18, 2010
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Are You Suffering from “E-mail” Stress?
When is too much e-mail too much? Try 50 or more messages a day.
I just read that according to a Harris Interactive survey, that 50 is the breaking point for employees’ daily allowance of e-mail. Anything more sets their heads spinning.
For some perspective consider a mind-blowing 90 trillion e-mails, or 247 billion a day, were sent last year, according to web-monitoring firm Pingdom.
One in five people say 50 work-related e-mail messages per day is the magic number before they feel swamped. The effect is even more pronounced for smartphone users; 37% feel “overwhelmed” by 50 or more work e-mail, says Jonathan McCormick, COO of Intermedia, a web-based e-mail provider that sponsored the survey.Here are some of the other key findings.
Small-business users are feeling the brunt. A staggering 94% of small-business employees said 50 e-mails is their limit. Geeze what a bunch of wimps…if I on receive 50 I worry that something went wrong with the server.
Gender makes no difference. Men and women are equally stressed — 94% of men and 95% of women cited the number 50.
Intermedia advises e-mail users to organize and prioritize their digital correspondence, and read and respond to incoming messages that require quick responses. Easier said than done now with the smart phone explosion there seems no escape from the deluge of e-mail
