American workers have created such a dependence on email that they have subsequently created an anxiety laden workplace that affects the ability to focus, diminishes productivity and threatens family bonds, according to an article on ChicagoTribune.com (July 31, 2008).

Many pundits are calling email the monster that is threatening to ruin American lives.  "It chases you," said Natalie Firstenberg, an LA therapist.  "There are no business hours."  Timithy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, worries that email simulates forward motion but doesn't necessarily create action.  "Email is used as a self-validation tool by people to procrastinate and to recreate activity versus productivity," he said.

This perspective becomes critical during this season of summer vacations as large numbers of "knowledge workers" struggle with the issue of bringing their BlackBerries along for the trip, debating the two-edge sword of ignoring email while gone and facing a tsunami of inbox items upon return, or spending time each day staying abreast of the tide.

Consider these facts: 38% of office workers' time is spent on email, according to RescueTime, while NY research firm Basex found that electronic interruptions from Spam, unnecessary email and instant messaging takes up 28% of the average knowledge workers' day.

Besides the drain on productivity email appears to be causing, a deeper problem is that it is also overloading people with more information than they can probably handle.  This in turn is causing more surface skimming of issues, and preventing deep dive investigations that can create knowledge or creative advancements, says Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.

A new software industry has sprung up to soften this problem, creating programs that can screen email, or batch them during critical times to prevent them from poping onto your screen as they arrive.  Some programs even send out automated messages to let senders know at what points each day people will be reviewing their inboxes.  (Two programs to consider might be ClearContext and Xobni.)

As with all workplace processes, the solution lies with understanding the critical pieces of information each person within your workflows requires in order to provide customer satisfaction, and to safeguard those pathways either through time management training, software blocking aids, or changes to process flows.  Our first and third books in the Success Series can help you.  Positioning Success can now be ordered fromour Home page, and Retaining Success will soon be avialable.