Image caption ‘I found a folder of unsorted emails from Facebook’
Or that people worry about emails missing their place on a desk.
But it might take only a few emails – and instead of mocking people for the “lost emails” they experience, we’d probably be more careful to sort things out.
Sorting out emails – even setting them up to be sent to the right inbox in the first place – might not be a priority for most of us. But these things can significantly reduce how much time and energy we waste on sending and receiving unimportant messages.
Some employers monitor employee email for security reasons, whether by accident or on purpose. And if you don’t realise that you should sort your email, you might as well just delete it, says guest contributor R, X of Occidental College in California.
And don’t think that all of us miss hours of action. In May, MIT released a study into how long we waste on emails, going as far as to count how much time people spend responding to emails.
It took an average of 61 seconds for people to open a new email and respond to it, while 63% of people reported that email-related activity took at least five minutes.
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