Number of words: 491
Estimated reading time: less than 2 minutes
I would have started writing this a few minutes earlier, but I had to check email one last time.
My name is Ann Gomez and I am addicted to email.
Is email consuming our day?
How about you? How often do you check email? Apparently, the norm these days is every five minutes (Renaud et al, 2006).
Estimates are that professionals spend 40-50% of their day on email. And we send on average 20,000 each year, with that number increasing at a compound rate of 14.6% per year. Yowza!
Maybe I’m not the only one addicted to this thing.
Seriously, is email really addictive?
Apparently, the urge to check email or tweet is harder to resist than alcohol or tobacco (according to Dr Wilhelm Hofmann from the University of Chicago).
And dopamine, which drives our “seeking” behaviour appears to be involved. The ubiquitous nature of email provides us with the quick fixes, fuelling our seeking-hungry dopamine receptors. And when our fellow junkies get back to us immediately, we feel instant gratification, which encourages us to seek even more.
Dopamine is sensitive to cues. So that “ding” signalling a new email sends our dopamine system goes into overdrive. We can be humming along, minding our own business, when that “ding” comes out of nowhere. Suddenly, the Pavlovian dog in us takes over and we are itching to check email. In fact, if I am in your office, I want to check your email. The lure is that strong.
Dopamine is also accelerated with unpredictable events. This is akin to the slot machines of old. You never know when you will get the big win (or the juicy email). Psychologists call this the “variable reinforcement schedule” and it is a powerful driver of behaviour.
Maybe all of this explains why 59% of people check email from the bathroom. Shockingly, I once heard someone admit that he often excused himself from meetings to go to the bathroom simply because he wanted to check email!
Email isn’t only addictive. It’s an epidemic.
Is there a cost to this addiction?
We are well aware of the costs of some other well-know addictions. But an email addiction doesn’t seem to come with all of the same baggage. “I’ll just check email for a minute” seems quite harmless.
The problem is that it is hard to justify spending this much time on something. And it is equally hard to recover from a distraction. Jackson et al. (2002) found that it took 64 seconds to recover after the email interruption. Add this to the time it takes to “check” email and we are losing over one quarter of every hour. Ouch!
Is it time to change?
That brings me back to my original question: are you addicted to email? If you leave each day feeling as though you’ve been spinning your wheels, the answer might be yes.
And as they say about addictions, admitting it is the first step.
Next blog: Email Anonymous: How to kick your addiction
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