How often are you checking email or text messages? Are you addicted to them?
AOL Mail’s 4th Annual Email Addiction Survey is out and it paints a scary picture for some of you. The survey of more than 4,000 Americans, age 13 and over in the top 20 markets, has some interesting findings.
62% check work email on the weekends.
Guilty.
59% check email from the bathroom.
Who are those people?
There’s a lot of ground to cover here, but I’ll focus on a few things.
20% have more than 300 emails in their inbox.
I’d actually expect that to be higher, if you’re including home and work inboxes. I have a daily struggle to organize my work inbox. It’s futile. I’ve tried folders, I delete anything that takes care of itself in a day. My employer started automatically deleting emails that are three months or older (We can archive on our own) and I really haven’t ever said, ‘Hey, I miss that email I was saving’. That should tell me something.
I’ve read about people who organize their inboxes based on the sender or the subject line. That doesn’t work for me. I need my folders to store the stuff I need to come back to. But how many folders are too many? I try to limit the main screen on the inbox to the items I need to take action on in a given week.
More than 50% check email on vacation.
That’s just wrong, isn’t it? You’re on vacation! I guess I’m in the minority here. And I suppose it depends where you are on vacation. If you’re in the northwoods of Minnesota, there’s no point in checking email is there? If you’re in a major city with some downtime, go for it.
68% said emails with spelling and punctuation errors annoyed them.
There’s no reason for errors when you can spellcheck. No matter if you’re using your work or home email, spelling mistakes say more about you than you realize. Interestingly, 74% in the survey said they excuse errors when emails are sent from a mobile device, like a BlackBerry.
Allow me one rant on the BlackBerry deal, more and more of the people around me at the day job are using them, walking down the 10-foot wide hallways with the BlackBerry squarely positioned in front of their nose. I’ve also seen this on the streets of the cities I’ve been traveling to lately. Mobile emailing and text messaging has even led to some unfortunate “accidents” outlined in a recent Wall Street Journal article. Driving and emailing/texting is another just plain stupid idea.
If you’ve got to check or send that email or text, can’t you stop walking or driving for 30 seconds?
Email and text messaging have changed how we communicate for the better and they’re not going away. Like anything else – the Internet, the cell phone – it comes down to how you balance your time. Choose to check email instead of play with the kids? You’ll send a clear nonverbal message to your kids that you don’t want to be sending, do you? Choose to text and drive and injure or kill someone? Go ahead, explain your email/text addiction to the victim’s family.
Thanks to 901am for the heads-up on this survey.
August 8, 2008 at 1:58 am |
My company, the number one in its line of work in the U.S., recently had job candidates complete a written response to the following question: “Explain why our associates should have Blackberries.” The question was intended to differentiate who had writing skills and who did not (a requirement for the job), but my question is this – how much more can we be connected? How about, “Explain why we should NOT have Blackberries?”
It’s clear based on the results of this survey that the line between work and personal life has become more fuzzy since the internet boomed. The idea of set work hours is eroded by technology like the Blackberry. Imagine you are at your son’s baseball game, or your daughter’s volleyball game, and your Blackberry buzzes with a new email. Dilemma. Do you read it? If you ignore it, will a coworker read the same email and jump on the opportunity and one-up you? Are we that tied to our work?
Personal email is different. It’s usually free and easy to access. I admit I was slow to join the text messaging bandwagon. But it is easy, right? Get out a quick communication to friends in a millisecond by email or text message. Call them individually? Yeah, right. I think there is a huge potential for business to exploit marketing and advertising by text message. Imagine being in New York/Chicago/any major city and receiving a text from your favorite retailer – “Sale for the next three hours only!” or “Log on to our website by 8pm to receive a discount.” Goodbye Sunday circular…
Blackberry, iPhone, Xbox marketplace… we’re moving closer to one mobile device that serves as our all in one device that the PC was supposed to be. Phone, camera, music player, internet/email, movies, TV.