Taking A Break From Work E-mail Could Help Curb Stress: Study

If you're one of those people who chronically checks work e-mail -- on the weekends, at night, in the wee morning hours -- then STOP.

A new study from UC Irvine and U.S. Army researchers shows that taking a break from work email can lower stress and improve focus.

"We found that when you remove e-mail from workers' lives, they multitask less and experience less stress," study researcher Gloria Mark, an informatics professor at UC Irvine, said in a statement.

The research was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Computer-Human Interaction Conference.

Researchers attached heart rate monitors to 13 people using the computer as they worked in an office setting. The monitors measured the study participants' heart rate variability -- a more varied heart rate is linked with lower stress levels, while a more constant heart rate is linked with higher stress. Software sensors also monitored how often the study participants switched between windows on their computer.

The researchers found that when provided access to checking email, the study participants were constantly in on "high alert" -- with more constant heart rates -- and changed screens 37 times an hour, on average.

However, when the study participants were cut off from their e-mail for five days, their heart rates were more varied, researchers found. They also only changed the screens 18 times an hour, on average -- which is about half a many times as when they had e-mail access.

The only downside to going without e-mail, researchers found, was that it was linked with feeling 'somewhat isolated."

Recently, British researchers found that checking smartphones for e-mails and messages is linked with higher stress levels.

The Press Association reported that the most stressed people in that study were checking their phones even when there wasn't anything to check, and thinking that they had a new message when they really didn't (called "phantom alerts").

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Comments

[MyNameIsMickey]

01:37 PM on 05/09/2012

Not looking at your work emails may end stress, it could also end your employment. Who writes this stuff? No byline credit. For good reason, I suspect.

[mmmheaven]

08:21 AM on 05/10/2012

RIGHT!

[Claudia Roldan]

07:23 PM on 05/08/2012

Agreed- its hard not to check your email especially when your job is online based. But its very important to keep a work life balance. Here are some of my favorite workout routines I like to do instead of obsessing over work email. In the end is checking your email every 20 min worth it? http://www.skinnyscoop.com/list/claudia/how-to-stay-active-and-healthythe-skinnyscoop-way

[Soror4512]

05:30 PM on 05/08/2012

We teach people how to treat us. So let those who want to email on holidays, Sundays, early mornings, dinner time know what time it really is -- and stop replying to the emails. It's not that serious.If it is, call and leave a message. It not only stresses the email addressee but family members and friends hearing the "ding" all times of the day.

[emncaity]

01:28 PM on 05/08/2012

OK, and if I don't have a job at all, that's even less stress.

I mean, I'm trying to figure out the significance of the study. When people check work email, which is going to have something to do with presenting a problem to be solved, a situation to figure out, a meeting to prepare for--what, 80% of the time? 90%?--they're going to be more stressed than when they're doing nothing. Well, alrighty, then.

No question some people are obsessed with electronic stay-in-touchism. But the mere fact of checking and answering work email because you have a job? Come on.

I do, however, lament the modern ethic in which exempt employees tend to be "at" work essentially 100% of the time, because they're expected to be reachable at all times. THAT is a stressor that has got to stop--never being really "off."

[Matt Blanc]

11:16 AM on 05/08/2012

I worked (briefly) for a complete jerk/former GOP Congressman (as Mark Twain said,"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.") Anyway... the former boss insisted that all of his team carry blackberries (this was pre-iphone) and that we keep them on 24/7. How he loved that term. He would send out emails at 11:30 at night, or whenever he had a 'bright idea' and then expected all of us to respond, usually with a comment such as, "Brilliant! I'll get right on it!" He started favoring the suck-ups who actually responded to him at these insane hours. (Nothing we did was life-threatening or even particularly important, and certainly not so urgent that it couldn't be handled during regular office hours.) I knew I was going to leave about a week after this guy showed up, so I began cutting back on my blackberry use. Until he came I'd been sliding into the constant checking habit, and put in enough overtime during my last year of work to account for 2 months unpaid time getting things done. After he showed up, I turned it on at 9:00 am, and turned it off at 5:00 pm. And I cut back on my own overtime work, since it wasn't appreciated. I decided that his narcissism was not going to become my problem. Of course it helps to be ready to leave your job, as I was.

[Scoville Scale]

08:55 AM on 05/08/2012

I'm pretty sure my employer WANTS me multitasking and feeling stress.

[Let Them Eat Dog]

06:17 AM on 05/08/2012

Good advice, now if I can only find a job,

[nastan sparlos]

06:14 AM on 05/08/2012

Add Facebook and HP to the list. :-)

[loudpipes]

05:37 AM on 05/08/2012

My work has email? That explains a lot!

[doorlie]

05:15 AM on 05/08/2012

What? How else will I know I exist if I'm not seeing emails?

[ignacio sanabria]

03:59 AM on 05/08/2012

Stop working altogether. That is.

[Retromancer]

03:36 AM on 05/08/2012

I made a serious commitment to breaking my work E-mail addiction in 2012 and insisting on (not hoping for) a work-life balance. As a software developer I'm constantly competing with the pace of technology and my own peers, so in the past I foolishly equated work-life balance with lagging behind or giving up.

I've still got a way to go but I'm carving more time for myself this year, and spending more evenings nowhere near my work laptop. I can only hope I'll discover the joy of a guilt-free 40-hour work week and a chance to actually have a social life with reduced stress.

[triciap317]

05:31 AM on 05/08/2012

Good for you! I was issued a BlackBerry from by company and found myself checking and responding to messages on the weekend, etc. It was when my son (then 3 years old) repeatedly asked me to play trains and I snapped at him, thus hurting his feelings (complete with toddler tear-brimmed eyes), that I realized it ends at my office door at 5 PM each night. I don't even think the thing is charged at this point :)

[zmfts]

10:51 PM on 05/07/2012

I used to have a supervisor who would come up to me and say things like, "You need to check the e-mail I just sent you." When I asked her what the message was about, she wouldn't tell me. I was being required to stop having a face-to-face conversation with her, put down the work I was already doing, go find a computer to log into, and call up the message whose contents she could have just verbally relayed to me.

With that said, checking your e-mail obsessively, whether at work or at home, is just another form of electronic addiction.