Here’s a quick quiz: how many hours per day does the average American worker spend on personal and work email?

(1) Less than one hour
(2) One to two hours
(3) Three hours
(4) Five hours or more

If you answered (4) give yourself a pat on the back. And stop emailing!

A recent survey by Adobe found that the typical worker spends more than five hours per day checking their email.

“Email continues to be the preferred way to ask co-workers a quick question (39 percent), provide a status update (57 percent) or even provide feedback (47 percent),” says an Adobe executive in this CNBC article. “While email is a large part of our current workday, we expect it will only increase in significance, with 26 percent of survey respondents saying they expect their use of email at work to increase over the next two years.”

Some survey specifics: respondents spent an average of 209 minutes checking their work email and 143 minutes checking their personal email, for a total of 352 minutes (about five hours and 52 minutes) each day.

Read the CNBC article, “Here’s How Many Hours American Workers Spend on Email Each Day,” by Abigail Hess.

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How Much Time Are You Spending on Email?

Here are some other takeaways from the Adobe survey:

• When it comes to clearing out their inbox, Baby Boomers are the worst. Only 38 percent of boomers ever reach a zero inbox. Forty-four (44) percent of Gen Xers clear out their inboxes, while 51 percent of Millennials get there.
• We check email on the go. “Adobe found that Americans are checking their email while watching TV, in bed, during work meetings, during meals, while driving and even in the bathroom,” Hess writes. “But [Adobe] also recognized a growing push to limit the amount of time they check work emails during their personal time.”
• Forty-eight (48) percent of workers say they don’t check their work emails until they actually begin working. Thirteen (13) percent check their email in bed,15 percent while commuting and 25 percent while eating breakfast.
• Millennials are more interested than other generational cohorts in creating work-life balance. Even so, they check their email at above-average rates.
• Baby Boomers are more likely to create email-free space and ignore their emails when on vacation. “Just over half of those born in this generation said they don’t look at their work emails at all when they get away but 25 percent of Millennials and Gen X respondents said they check their work emails multiple times a day while on vacation,” according to Hess.

What about you? How much time do you spend on email each day?

Source: CNBC

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