London - It could turn out to be the perfect excuse to put off dealing with tiresome messages.
Limiting yourself to checking your emails to three times a day can help reduce stress, according to a study.
Although it may prove difficult in the age of smartphones and 24-hour workdays, looking at the inbox only a few times a day is far better than constantly dealing with each message as it arrives, researchers found.
In the study at the University of British Columbia in Canada, 124 adult volunteers – who included students, financial analysts and medical professionals – were split into two groups. One was instructed to limit checking email to three times daily for one week, and the other to check their inbox as often as they could – which turned out to be roughly the same number of times they usually did so outside the study.
The instructions were then reversed for the next week, while volunteers answered daily surveys on stress levels.
“People felt less stressed when they checked their email less often,” said Kostadin Kushlev, the study’s author and a psychology PhD candidate. But he added “Most participants found it quite difficult to check their email only a few times a day.”
Mr Kushlev also said employers could help reduce stress among staff by encouraging them to check work emails only in chunks. - Daily Mail