For years I had everything under control. All my friends were into it. I could quit at any time.
It started with a little hit here and there – maybe once or twice a week.
No biggie.
Then I started doing it at work. And at home. Holidays were also fair game. Before long I was taking extra trips to restaurant bathrooms just to get my fix. My relationships suffered. My parents disapproved. I couldn't concentrate at work. I was a slave to my habit.
They say the first step is admitting you have a problem so here goes: My name is Leah and I am an e-mailaholic.
The idea of technology addiction is nothing new (look up the term “crackberry” in any slang dictionary for details), but what about the idea of treatment?
We joke about being hooked, but when it comes to coping we don't take the problem seriously. Why? Because our culture condones it.
Grappling with an e-mail addiction in the media field in 2007 is a bit like coping with alcoholism in the publishing world of the 1950s – you're trying to get things under control, but the mandatory three-martini lunches aren't helping.
And like boozy meetings, excessive e-mail use has a nasty habit of blurring the line between fun and work.
As Michael Agger recently observed on Slate.com: “Sure we're miffed when we check e-mail on vacation and get dragged back into work mode, but we just wanted to see if our friend sent us the photos, or if our broker has any new listings to show us when we get back. Not checking e-mail doesn't simply mean checking out of work; it means checking out of your entire social life.”
But for those of us who are ready to cut back, there is help – online, of course.
Marsha Egan, an American life coach and productivity expert, is the mastermind behind a new 12-step program for e-mail junkies, the details of which are available on her website (www.eganemailsolutions.com). The program, which was recently featured on ABC and Fox News, offers a series of reasonable-sounding solutions for controlling your e-mail so it doesn't control you. In Egan's view, the need for communications management is crucial, not just for our own mental health, but for the state of the economy. The average North American worker, she says, wastes 60 to 90 minutes a day on e-mail distractions – and that number does not take into account time spent actually responding to messages. It refers to the average time it takes to return to a task once interrupted (four minutes, Egan estimates).
Given my own struggles with my outlook (Microsoft, that is), I decided to try Egan's program. First on the list is admitting I'm e-addicted – no problem. The next step is committing to keeping my inbox empty. A nice thought, but I have almost 2,000 messages in my inbox. (Had I taken the time to reorganize and delete my excess e-mail this week, the column you are reading would not exist.) Next up: Create folders. Done. Create broad folder headings: Done.
Skipping over a few steps, I move on to the biggest challenge of all: turning off the automatic message notification, thereby cutting out work interruptions. To go along with this, Egan recommends I establish regular times to check my messages. She suggests once every 90 minutes. Given that I currently look at my inbox every three or four minutes, I decide to cut back to once an hour. Here is how it went.
Tuesday, 8 a.m.: Wake, check e-mail.
9: Doctor's appointment.
10: Arrive at work, check e-mail – 36 new messages. Spend 45 minutes responding.
10:55: Turn off Outlook new message notification.
11:02: Forgot I'd shut down send/receive function and inadvertently check e-mail – two messages, one is a press release from a party planner, the other is spam. Ignore both.
11:30: Feeling restless, check online bank statement. Account is overdrawn $7.00. Weird.
11:42: Finished reading Slate, Perez Hilton, Go Fug Yourself, The New York Times, Arts and Letters Daily, Style.com and the Spectator online. Eyes wandering over to Outlook icon, mouse finger itching, wondering what treasures await in neglected inbox.
11:52: Can't resist a little peek. Six e-mails. Three work-related, two spam, one from a girlfriend inviting me for pizza at her place tonight. I can't, but take four minutes to construct witty reply, hoping more messages will come in as I'm doing so. They don't.
12:15: Three hundred words written for column. Starting to lose it. Walk around the corner and get a sandwich for lunch. Resist checking BlackBerry while out.
12:35: Back at desk. Dying to check e-mail. Eat lunch and read story notes instead.
12:55: Check e-mail. Only two lousy messages! One from enabling editor asking how the e-mail rehab is going, other appears to be in Chinese.
1:17: Check bank account again. Still overdrawn. Now at 450 words written.
1:42: Jump up from desk, pull out clump of hair, disrupt co-workers with shrieking noises in an effort to avoid checking e-mail.
1:43: Check e-mail. Nothing.
The verdict? Once an e-mailaholic, always an e-mailaholic. Excuse me while I BlackBerry my sponsor.
