Email Responsiveness: I'm Not Normal And That's OK!

I'm not addicted to email. I will only check my inbox maybe 4-5 times a day (twice in the morning, once at lunch time, and twice in the afternoon). If I didn't do that, I know my productivity would nose dive (mostly because the work I do demands a lot of concentration). I think I upset some of my colleagues who wonder why I'm not replying immediately. According to the research I'm unusual, and my colleagues are 'normal'. Work conducted by Dr. Thomas Jackson at Loughborough University in the UK reveals that most people will respond to email as soon as it arrives (70 percent of alerts getting a reaction within six seconds - faster than letting the phone ring three times). He also found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after an interruption by email. And so, those who are checking their email every five minutes waste 8 1/2 hours a week figuring out what they were doing before the interruption! For more interesting findings on the use of email visit this!