At the Future of Web Apps conference last week I went to a very interesting talk by Suw Charman-Anderson, a social software consultant, working with companies in the UK and US on social media and Web 2.0 projects.

Suw highlighted some scary facts about email, including:

• 38% of people get more than 100 emails per day
• 13% get more than 250 emails
• 22% of people spend more than 4 hours a day on email
• 35% of people say they check every 15 minutes, but when observed actually check every 5!

Suw made a comparison between checking email and a gambling addiction and I can certainly see where she is coming from. People regularly check email for that ocassional gratifying feeling of getting a nice message.

More worrying was the amount of time that checking email takes up. Every time that you check your email you are distracted from your work and it takes the average person 64 seconds to recover their train of thought afterwards. If this wasn’t shocking enough, it can be up to 15 minutes for a software developer as they are so involved in the code they are writing. Across a week this can account for up to 8 hours of lost time per worker.

The whole talk was a real eye opener and has made us rethink how we are using email across the organistation. We will be conducting a trial whereby auto email checking and notification pop-ups are disabled. Instead people will be encouraged to manually check email at scheduled times e.g. first thing, just before lunch, just after lunch and just before they go home. If everyone is checking mail at the same time then responses to emails should become more efficient.

You can read the full article on Suw’s website.