The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ““Done!”” pod­cast:

Are You Less Tired from Batching?

In a Dutch study, researchers Wijn­gaards, Pronk and Burg­er exam­ined the impact of batch email han­dling on the dai­ly fatigue of 112 office work­ers. Are you less tired at the end of the day if you read emails in batches?

The study found that par­tic­i­pants felt less tired when they had batched their emails com­pared to when they had han­dled them freely and spon­ta­neous­ly when­ev­er they arrived — if they got many emails a day and if the sender did­n’t usu­al­ly expect a quick response.

Batch­ing had no effect on par­tic­i­pants who received few emails because there was not much dif­fer­ence between read­ing emails in batch­es or when they came in sparse­ly dur­ing the day. Par­tic­i­pants in roles that required them to reply quick­ly felt more stressed by hav­ing to ​“wait” to han­dle incom­ing emails until it was time for the next batch.

Not Every­thing Fits Everyone

So, also here, like in most sit­u­a­tions, you should not take a state­ment as an absolute truth that applies to every­one. That some­thing is rec­om­mend­ed for many is a guide that it is like­ly rec­om­mend­ed for you too, but it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly so. You need to find the best solu­tion for you (as indi­cat­ed by this study).

Do This

Reflect on how it is for you.

• Do you get so many emails dai­ly that you are inter­rupt­ed so often that you would feel bet­ter batch­ing them occasionally?
• Or do you get so few emails that they are not much of a both­er when it comes to your abil­i­ty to focus dur­ing the day?
• Do you need to reply to emails so quick­ly that batch­ing would neg­a­tive­ly affect the ser­vice lev­el you pro­vide? Is it, for exam­ple, a require­ment of your job to answer your cus­tomers quickly?

Is the expect­ed response time to emails in your busi­ness so long that you could eas­i­ly decide to direct your atten­tion to emails less often?

Choose an approach to email man­age­ment that fits you, your role and the busi­ness you work in.

For me, it works best to han­dle emails in batch­es now and then dur­ing the day, but not at cer­tain times.

Emails Serve You

If you shape how you han­dle emails to fit you and your busi­ness, emails will become less of a prob­lem. Instead, it will be more of a nec­es­sary work tool among oth­ers. You take con­trol of emails instead of feel­ing like they have con­trol over you. Isn’t that preferable?

How Do You Do It?

What have you found for an approach to email han­dling that fits you? Please write to me and let me know.

(Many of the emails we han­dle are nec­es­sary and valu­able for our work, while some can steal time and focus unnec­es­sar­i­ly. Here’s how you can get rid of emails and mes­sages you do not want to spend time on!)