![]() ![]() Skinner famously discovered, pigeons pecked at levers more often when given a reward on a variable schedule of reinforcement. ![]() For one thing, it provides a variable reward. ![]() Email is perhaps the mother of all habit-forming products. Why is email such a persistent problem? The answer can be found in understanding our psychology. When it comes to the hours managers spend on email, they estimate that “25 percent of that time is consumed reading emails that should not have been sent to that particular manager and 25 percent is spent responding to emails that the manager should never have answered.” In other words, about half the time we spend on email is as productive as counting cracks in the ceiling. Lest you think email time is well spent, researchers writing in the Harvard Business Review have concluded that an astonishing number of workplace emails are an utter waste. Given the hundreds of times per day we check our devices, those minutes can add up. In fact, a study published in the International Journal of Information Management found office workers took an average of sixty-four seconds after checking email to reorient themselves and get back to work. Realistically, though, that’s a very conservative estimate, since those three hours and twenty minutes don’t include the wasted time needed to get back on task between checking emails. If an average workday is nine to five minus an hour for lunch, then email eats up nearly half the day. At just two minutes per email, that adds up to three hours and twenty minutes per day. The average office-dwelling professional receives a hundred messages per day. Some basic math reveals just how big the problem is. ![]()
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