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Research study by Gloria Mark, Stephen Voida, and Armand Cardeno, 2012 on impact of work with/without email "ABSTRACT We report on an empirical study where we cut off email usage for five workdays for 13 information workers in an organization. We employed both quantitative measures such as computer log data and ethnographic methods to compare a baseline condition (normal email usage) with our experimental manipulation (email cutoff). Our results show that without email, people multitasked less and had a longer task focus, as measured by a lower frequency of shifting between windows and a longer duration of time spent working in each computer window. Further, we directly measured stress using wearable heart rate monitors and found that stress, as measured by heart rate variability, was lower without email. Interview data were consistent with our quantitative measures, as participants reported being able to focus more on their tasks. We discuss the implications for managing email better in organizations" CONCLUSIONS Our study has shown that there are benefits to not being continually connected by email. Without email, our informants focused longer on their tasks, multitasked less, and had lower stress. It is an open question to what extent the effects we found in our study might be sustainable. How the benefits of reduced email usage might outweigh the known benefits of email in reaching larger numbers of people rapidly with information is not clear. What our study suggests is that the tradeoffs among email usage, work pace, stress, and collaboration need to be more closely explored. There will always be new "zombies" lurking with advances in information technology, and we must continue to be vigilant in assessing the human costs that are incurred when these advances are adopted in the workplace.

Updated blog post by Linda Stone on screen and email apnea, Huffington Post, May 7, 2012. Eighty percent of us seem to have it. I broke the story about it in early 2008 on the Huffington Post, and called the phenomenon, "email apnea." Later in 2008, in talks and interviews, I referred to it interchangeably as "email apnea" and also, as "screen apnea." Definition: Shallow breathing or breath holding while doing email, or while working or playing in front of a screen. Excerpt: Recently, researchers, Gloria Mark, Stephen Voida, and Anthony Cardello, have made headway into formally validating the impact of email, using HRV. Why are we doing this? Our posture is often compromised, especially when we use laptops and smartphones. Arms forward, shoulders forward, we sit in a position where it's impossible to get a healthy and full inhale and exhale. Further, anticipation is generally accompanied by an inhale -- and email, texting, and viewing television shows generally includes a significant dose of anticipation. Meanwhile, the full exhale rarely follows. The stress-related physiology of email apnea or screen apnea is described in some detail in my 2008 post, linked to above. What's the remedy? A new way of interacting with technologies that I call: Conscious Computing. Technologies like the Heartmath emWave2, Huffington Post's GPS for the Soul, and a variety of optimal breathing techniques, can support us in using technologies in healthier ways. Instead of sending an email, call or walk over to your colleague's office. And there's always that other possibility: every now and then, just turn everything off. When you text or use email on your smartphone, when you check and respond to your email, are you breathing or do you hold your breath? Is it worse when you're using a laptop vs. an iPad? How might you incorporate some of the remedies?

Linda Stone's key blog in Huffington Post on "Just Breathe: Building the Case for Email Apnea", 2/8/2008 Excerpt: Now I want to know: Is it only the Big Mac that makes us fat? Or, are we more obese and diabetic because of a combination of holding our breath off and on all day and then failing to move when our bodies have prepared us to do so? Can fifteen minutes of diaphragmatic breathing before a meal tune us in to when we're full? If, when we're doing sedentary work, and O2, CO2, and NO are optimally balanced, through healthy breathing, will we escape the ravages of an always-on sympathetic nervous system? Can daily breathing exercises contribute to helping reduce asthma, ADD, depression, obesity, and a host of other stress-related conditions? I predict, within the next 5 to 7 years, breathing exercises will be a significant part of every fitness regime. In the meantime, why not breathe while doing email? Awareness is the first step toward wiping out email apnea! *Email apnea - a temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, while doing email (Linda Stone, February 2008)

Excellent Blog post by Chris Munch, July 11, 2013 on stopping his dopamine addiction with graphic mainlining-technology image. Excerpt I have an addiction that cost at least 18 months of my life… This was not an addiction with drugs or alcohol, and in-comparison the 'high' was mundane, just avoiding life and responsibility. Months went by, lost to an addictive and bitter procrastination. Nobody was worried, on the surface I looked busy and hard working, yet around me life passed me by while I was infused in a dopamine haze. I'm a recovering addict to email, Skype, Facebook and so many little fun distractions online. My First Step to Recovery I lost about 1.5yrs of my life to email and chat. And then one day I read something which said turn off all auto-checking of email and IM notifications so that you won't get disturbed when you have work to do. I felt pretty dumb having spent the last couple of years doing the opposite, allowing myself to be constantly interrupted. After I made that little change things began to get better. That's when I realized I had an addiction. Even without the auto-alerts I found myself constantly being drawn in to see the latest unimportant message I had received.

article in Bits, NYT, by Nick Bilton on coping with email, January 19, 2014. Found the article through notation by my LinkedIn link Bob Gallo. Brings up the term email_bankruptcy whereby one deletes all the unread email at the start of the new year.

Todd Bishop of Geekwire talks about fears of tossing emails and gets help from the psychologist on the A&E show Hoarders. Dr. Robin Zasio says hoarding emails, like hoarding "stuff" is about fear of needing it some day.

Katie Bascuas on recent email surveys on usage, importance of short subject headings, etc. AssociationsNow, June 18, 2015

Linda Stone's blog, April 20, 2012. Runs something called The Attention Project. New terms: conscious computing, email and screen apnea, continuous partial attention Excerpt: "Thirty years ago, personal computing technologies created a revolution in personal productivity, supporting a value on self-expression, output and efficiency. The personal communications technology era that followed the era of personal productivity amplified accessibility and responsiveness. Personal technologies have served us well as prosthetics for the mind, in service of thinking and doing. Our focus has been on technologies as prosthetics for the mind, and human-as-machine style productivity. This has led to burn-out, poor health, poor sleep, and what I call email apnea or screen apnea. We wonder where our attention has gone. Turns out, it's right where we left it - with our ability to breathe fully. We can use personal technologies that are prosthetics for our beings, to enhance our lives. I call this Conscious Computing. We can use technology to help enable Conscious Computing, or we can find it on our own, through attending to how we feel. For advice from a musician on how to do Conscious Computing, I interviewed the organist, Cameron Carpenter. Conscious Computing with the help of passive, ambient, non-invasive Heart Rate Variability (HRV) technology is poised to take off over the next few years. It has the potential to help all of us learn the skills that musicians, athletes and dancers have, that immunizes them from email apnea."

Great article by Susan Weinschenk, Brain Wise: Work better, work smarter, September 11, 2012, and why dopamine keeps us "seeking" when we already have enough information. excerpt: Do you ever feel like you are addicted to email or twitter or texting? Do you find it impossible to ignore your email if you see that there are messages in your inbox? Do you think that if you could ignore your incoming email or messages you might actually be able to get something done at work? You are right!" ... "Instead of dopamine causing you to experience pleasure, the latest research shows that dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases your general level of arousal and your goal-directed behavior. From an evolutionary stand-point this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps you motivated to move through your world, learn, and survive. It's not just about physical needs such as food, or sex, but also about abstract concepts. Dopamine makes you curious about ideas and fuels your searching for information. Research shows that it is the opioid system (separate from dopamine) that makes us feel pleasure." Turn off the cues - One of the most important things you can do to prevent or stop a dopamine loop, and be more productive is to turn off the cues. Adjust the settings on your cell phone and on your laptop, desktop or tablet so that you don't receive the automatic notifications. Automatic notifications are touted as wonderful features of hardware, software, and apps. But they are actually causing you to be like a rat in a cage. If you want to get work done you need to turn off as many auditory and visual cues as possible. It's the best way to prevent and break the dopamine loops. What do you think? How do you deal with dopamine loops? Are you willing to turn off your cues?

blog post by Dmitri Dragilev in Better Humans "Dopamine is why CEOs write down goals and vision statements. As you move toward these goals, mentors and advisors reassure you that you are moving in the right direction and every step of the way you get a shot of dopamine. The problem is that all of us have learned how to cheat the system and get shots of dopamine without actually accomplishing anything. Gambling is a great example, every time you pull that handle on a slot machine you get dopamine. Alcohol is the same story, a shot of whiskey = a shot of dopamine, you want more, you repeat; you're not actually moving toward a vision or a goal." I too am guilty of dopamine addiction. I love email and depend on it for a lot of my day to day work. I love instigating stuff, fast back and forths, and knowing what is happening everywhere. But I have found that all this stuff re-prioritizes my day quite a bit. For the past year I have successfully disabled email, Twitter, Facebook, and text message notifications on my phone and have kept it off since then. My life has been transformed. Not only do I find that there are a lot less distractions, I find that I stay focused on the right tasks that keep me marching toward my overall goal. Again, I'm not saying that what I did is the magic formula for everyone. What I am saying is that perhaps it's time to re-assess how much you check your email, text messages, social media and your devices in general and see if you're cheating the system in order to get a rush of dopamine or you're truly marching toward your goal.

blog by Eric Barker on greater productivity, June 1, 2014 1) Manage your mood--If you start the day calm it's easy to get the right things done and focus. "2) Don't Check Email In The Morning" Research shows email: Stresses you out. Can turn you into a jerk. Can be more addictive than alcohol and tobacco. And checking email frequently is the equivalent of dropping your IQ 10 points. 3) Ask whether it should be done at all 4) Focus is nothing more than eliminating all the distractions 5) Have a personal system 6) Define your goals the night before

article by Jill Duffy on email management, March 5, 2012. Also a two minute video on this page that explains the tips: 1. delete (useless stuff) first when you open the inbox 2. Write short 3. Reuse sent messages 4. Reuse subject lines 5. Use groups/distribution lists 6. Sort to delete 7. Turn off notifications 8. Close email to focus 9. Use auto-replies wisely 10. Delete (or at very least, file messages into folders) 11. Take out the trash (daily) or set up auto-dump

A blog from Workintelligent.ly about how intranet, based on social media concepts but for working within a company, could supplant email. I found the comments very interesting - issues such as most projects are by independent contractors who don't benefit from intranets, etc.

Nice discussion of email design from Ernie Smith at Associations Now --did not know its complexity until now

interesting look at doing away with our reliance on email

Good list of 10 reasons people save emails, with some humor. Will put on the Unclutter your closet resource list.

Interesting cultural studies piece in the NYTimes about unwanted email. The law is that marketers and businesses must have an option to let you unsubscribe, but fledgling businesses or friends' businesses fall through the cracks. What to do about it? Some new software, hitting delete, creating an email account you never use or view.

Merlin Mann, March 13, 2006, on five sneaky email cheats template, the link, the question, the "I don't know", the delete key

Email charter.org ten rules to reverse the email spiral into Twitter-like mountains of messages

blog post by Donston-Miller, June 4, 2012 on how social changes how we work 1. website home pages (home pages less of a destination, Facebook timeline becoming more important) 2. Email--with built-in IM systems on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, email less important. Google+ users get tight integration on communication tools 3. Help desk call centers--moving to discussion forms on social networking platforms 4. Resumes-- "Now, social networks are basically living resumes. Or, looked at another way, you are your resume; what you post, how you interact, what you share, who your friends and followers are, and more all combine to demonstrate your value to a company." 5. PBXes--enterprise wide phone systems are affected by Skype and online chat and messaging features