Did you know the average person checks their email around 15 times a day?
A study done by Adobe found the typical white-collar worker in America spends about 4.1 hours a day checking their work email. That’s 20.5 hours a week. Considering most work weeks are 40 hours, that’s more than HALF of your time at work.
As someone who checks their email every time a notification is received, you can imagine my shock. Which lead me to the question: When IS the best time to check your email?
Depends on Your Work Environment
For many people who work at an agency or any client-facing position, the times may vary. When it comes to delivering services to our clients, communication is key.
Since JP Marketing is ROWE-certified (Results-Only Work Environment™), we have the liberty of communicating with our clients at their earliest convenience. Most of our client communication is done through email, which makes it difficult for us to stray away from constantly checking on our clients.
To Check Emails in the Morning or Not
You just have to have to ask yourself if you’re more productive in the morning or later in the day. For me, mornings tend to be when I’m most productive, which is why I’ve gotten into the habit checking my emails as soon as I wake up.
Although, some would say this is unproductive.
How, you ask? Well, studies show you are more likely to get stressed before even showing up to work because you are concerned about all the emails that you need to reply to.
On the other hand, Dorie Clark from the Harvard Business Review found that the problem wasn’t the amount of emails she needed to respond to, but how to handle the emails. When it comes to responding to your emails, the average person will take around six seconds.
However, when checking your emails later in the day, your response time might be delayed since it was pushed off due to the decision making of how to respond.
So, What’s The Verdict?
The truth is, there is no right answer or formula to figure it out.
Everyone has to find a system to answering and checking their emails that works best for them. I, for one, will stick to checking my email in the morning (then obsessively throughout the day). Hopefully you found this useful and will discover your best time to check your emails.
–Cynthia Avila, Account Coordinator
