Stop Checking Your Email: It May Be Stressing You Out

Is your inbox bothering you? Researchers at the University of British Columbia have found that checking it less could help to ease up your psychological stress.

During a two-week study, researchers examined 124 participants, including students, financial analysts medical professionals and others. Some of the participants were instructed to limit checking their email to three times daily for a week while others were told to check their email as often as they wanted.

However, study authors then reversed the requests for participants during the subsequent week. They also asked participants to briefly answer daily surveys, including information about their stress levels.

"Our findings showed that people felt less stressed when they checked their email less often," said Kostadin Kushlev, the study's lead author and a PhD candidate at UBC's Dept. of Psychology, in a news release.

However, changing inbox behavior may be easier said than done.

"Most participants in our study found it quite difficult to check their email only a few times a day," says Kushlev. "This is what makes our obvious-in-hindsight findings so striking: People find it difficult to resist the temptation of checking email, and yet resisting this temptation reduces their stress."

Kushlev said that the experiment idea came from his own stressful experience. Now he only checks his email a few times a day in chunks.

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

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