Ease off email (you'll live longer!!!)

Taken from:
http://blogs.cio.com/e-mail/17050/ease-email-youll-live-longer

This is from a blogger at CIO.com.  He / she notes:

Higher heart rates, shorter attention spans and more stress are just some of the downsides of email addiction. A new study shows that unplugging now and then may save your life.

I'm probably an email addict (okay ... I AM an email addict).  I check email first thing in the morning and last thing at night.  Maybe one of my students has a question; maybe one of our children sent some information; maybe I have a committee or some other things I need to be doing.

Again, the author noted:

Interestingly, the paper cites earlier research showing that that 70 percent of emails sent to information workers were attended to within six seconds of arriving. Think about that. No wonder the researchers at Irvine found that when deprived of email, workers were better able to focus on the task at hand. Frankly, I've looked at half a dozen emails while writing this post. Wouldn't I be done already if I hadn’t kept switching from window to window? And maybe I'd be doing a better job. 

My outlook email (campus email) has a feature that displays the information on the screen for a few seconds.  So, if I'm in Word, Excel, on the Internet, etc. - I see that message - actually reading and pre-processing that message.  If I don't turn off email in class, it pops up the message and interrupts class.  It also interrupts my thoughts.

Maybe an email vacation is a good thing!!!