How to manage your inbox: is a once a day strategy best?

Abstract

Many people are overloaded by the amount of email they receive. Because of this, a considerable amount of time can be spent every day managing one's inbox. Previous work has shown that people adopt different strategies for managing their inbox. However, there has been little work examining how the choice of email management strategy impacts the total time that one gives to email activities each day. In the current study seven academics spent one week trying out different email management strategies: either a once-a-day strategy or a frequent strategy. Data on the amount of time spent managing email and subjective feelings towards each strategy were gathered. Results suggest that a once a day email management strategy may be effective in reducing the total time spent dealing with email.