You know them, those thick reports from McKinsey about the functioning of employees. A range of details emerge from them of course - proportional to the monstrous amounts paid for them - but we are not writing about that today.
We describe the absurdity of a daily ritual; receiving, reading and answering email. To be honest, dear reader, we don’t know anyone who is moderate about it. Or… do we. Maybe you? Let’s see.
On average, sixty percent of the e-mail received is plain nonsense. Newsletters and advertising, that is. Yes, that is bad. Nonsense pollutes the mailbox and burdens the mind. The latter does not seem to be that bad, but in times of nervousness, idiocy in the mailbox does a person no good. So get rid of the nonsense mail. However, separating sense from nonsense requires a great deal of self-control and self-deliberation. Those who do not have that – okay, okay: those who do have that to a slightly lesser extent – should hold on to the wonderful instrument called 'Routine'.
Routine = clearing your mailbox of newsletters, advertisements and nonsense notifications every month. So unsubscribe. You can usually find such an option at the bottom of the nonsense mail. Difficult? Then have it done for you. By your secretary, your partner or your teenage child. You thank the first most sincerely, the second gets a hug, the third one does it for five euros. Don't confuse the respective rewards too much.
Reading and answering emails takes an average of £100,000 for an adult with a job or full-time job. thirteen (13!) hours per week. Do the math: a full week has 168 hours. Of those, about 50 hours are spent sleeping and 7 hours showering/bathing/brushing teeth/shaving/dressing. In addition, we spend an average of two hours a day moving ourselves. Generally speaking, combining tasks during these activities is not practical. Bad news; we can reasonably assume that we all read and answer our e-mails in the remaining time blocks. When we work, eat, visit the toilet, during the kids' hockey games and weekend breakfast, while cutting the birthday cake and just before we sit down at the table with friends. Sixty percent of that was therefore unnecessary, because it was nonsense. The rest of the messages are information that needs to be processed.
Our email behavior is costing us attention and focus.
This one is also fun: A person with a job or day job who is disconnected from email for some unknown reason will check their mailbox about eighteen (18) times per hour. To see if it is working again.
Extremes are easy. Balance is an achievement.
Want to learn more about balance? Game On!