Checking Email Frequently Kills Productivity

Apparently checking your email every five minutes, while good for the ego, is not good for your productivity.  It can take an average of 64 seconds for an individual to get back on task after checking their email–not counting the actual time to read and respond to the message–and folks that check it regularly waste up to 8.5 hours a week.

Yikes.

Email is supposed to be a tool that boosts efficiency, and indeed it does.  However, for many email users, the nagging feeling that there’s a message you’ve missed causes frequent visits to the inbox.

So while that message you’re waiting on might be critical to a project you’re working on, checking the inbox for that message 50 times in one morning is seriously undermining your ability to get work done.

The article also states that people spend, on average, over 2 hours a day in their Inbox.

So use your email liberally, just don’t let it use you.  Hey, send this article as a link to all your friends and you might just be wasting 64 seconds of their day.