Ignore your e-mail for more productive, less stressful workday

Ignoring your e-mail may be essential to making your work pace less frenetic, according to a study done of workers at a scientific research center. While the study has some flaws, it speaks more broadly to the importance of taking control of how work time is spent, particularly when it feels dictated by outside sources.

In the study, a group of 13 volunteers vowed to go on a no-e-mail diet for five days, with all new e-mails received during that period bypassing the inbox and a rule against sending any new e-mail. Researchers monitored both the heart rate of participants as well as the activity on their computer screens during the e-mail vacation and during a three-day control period of e-mail use.

While heart rates remained virtually the same—they were actually a bit higher, which the researchers attributed to an increase in reported away-from-desk activity—the concrete benefit was that the workers spent almost twice as much time in each window on average (over two minutes per windows without e-mail, versus 75 seconds with it) and switched windows half as much (18 times per hour on average without e-mail versus 37 with it). These results suggest that having no e-mail to attend to improved workers' attention spans and made their days less intense.

Qualitatively, the workers reported that their days without e-mail were refreshing because they were in the habit of letting it dictate their day. This highlights one of the study's weaknesses: people who feel like e-mail runs their life are going to sign up for a study that forces them away from it faster than Peter Bright would sign up for a week of free McRib sandwiches. The workers' colleagues reported no negative effects from the e-mail sabbaticals, though colleagues in the same office are easy enough to get in touch with.

The authors also didn't find any difference in the time spent managing e-mail. Once the study participants came back after five days away, they spent the same time trawling through their inbox as they would have if they were managing it continuously.

The study is small and limited in scope, and doesn't address benefits or drawbacks to people who have good or neutral feelings toward e-mail (if there are any such people). Still, those types may have less trouble stepping away, and could still see the same concentration benefits.