Four science-backed ways to fix your email

Four science-backed ways to fix your emailFour science-backed ways to fix your emailSo many emails, so much anxiety, little time.Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely decided to take a lookif we really need to be notified of every email that comes our way, and came up with a solution.It starts with thinking about your behavior when you get an email.Think about thesecond an email rolls into your inbox, sound and all does the hair on your arms stand at attention? Do you get goosebumps out of sheer dread? A little rush of anxiety into your stomach?What doesnt help email reproduces as quickly as rabbits do. You get an email, you reply, and what happens? You get another email in return, and then youre right back where you started. It becomes difficult to make a dent in the flow of it.More than 205 billion emails were sent and received every day in 2015, according to technology market research firm The Radicati Group.Whatever your experience is, you probably have some sort of int ernal reaction (even if its not nearly as visceral).Now think of that reaction multiplied hundreds of times in your company, thousands of times across your industry and millions of times across the country. A lot of people are sending a lot of emails around the world, which means that out-of-control email has an impact on how we work.Read on to find out just how much of a toll your email has on your productivity, andwhat can be done to help you mange your inbox(es).Turn off email notificationsYour email can wait. Turn off notifications and set specification times to check it.Getting caught up in other things while attempting to be productive can take a toll on you.Ariely argues that there is a high cost of interruption, namely, that there is a time cost, performance cost and one on stress/emotional well-being.He realized that with no way do determine how important emails arebased on a ping sound alone, we spend a lot of time and energy on messages that we might not need to focus on immediately.Arielyasked people to look at the last 40 emails that came their way, and askedthem when they needed to have seen the information in them, according to his blog post.He found that 7% hadto be seen within an hour, 4% at some point during a four hour period, 17% by the end of the day, 10% by the end of the week, and 15% at some point.But heres the tggele apparently, 34% didnt need to be seen at all. He also found that just 12% of received emails needed to be seen within the first five minutes.This is the worst part of emails they have the power to throw off your mood. Getting interrupted at work constantly can negatively impact your physical and mental health, and thats all email does.Our data suggests that people compensate for interruptions by working faster, but this comes at a price experiencing more stress, higher frustration, time pressure and effort, according to a study by researchers Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of California, Irvine.Is that em ail worth the trouble of stopping what youre doing? Probably not. Turn off your inbox if you want to focus at work, and check email later.Sort by senderAriely thinks we should weigh the importance of each email.The first thing we should question is this idea that all emails are created equal. Should each email be able to interrupt people? Is the email from someones boss as important as the weekly industry newsletter hes signed up for? What if we designed a different system in which emails were not treated equally? Ariely wrote in a blog post.So he came up with a solutiona method of sorting emails based on the sender.In other words, depending on the sender, emails could be set to be received at different intervals.He helped create anapp calledFiltr, and found that just like in his prior research, people sorted their emails according to who sent them.He wrote that just 23% were set up with the immediate label,10% every-4-hours,19% the end of the day, 16% to the end of the week, 5% to some day and 27% had thenever label.This is one way to take control of your email.According to The Atlantic, Ariely has also helped create a web app called Shortwhale, whichlets you tell senders how you like to get your emails.Unsubscribe or FilterThe key to fighting email, Ariely says, is to reduce distractions. Fewer emails mean fewer distractions. If you get daily status updates, newsletters or even sales offers, consider either unsubscribing or filtering them into folders you can check later.Archive everything to empty your inboxFollowing Arielys theories, your inbox has a strong effect on your wellbeing. You can clear it out and keep only the emails you need to act on. The secret? Select everything you dont immediately need, and hit archive on your email client. All your old email will still be searchable, but it wont be staring you in the face and dragging you into past conversations.