You are here: Home>Collections

Check mails every few minutes? Lose the habit for less stress, high productivity

ET Bureau Sep 14, 2012, 06.40AM IST

Can't get through the day without checking your email every few minutes? Maybe it's time to change that habit. Recent experiments conducted at the University of California show that even temporarily disconnecting from your inbox will do wonders for your stress levels. Not to mention the added boost to productivity.

UC Irvine informatics professor Gloria Mark who led this study first monitored a group of people as they went about their daily routine. Then, they were made to disconnect from email completely. Using various sensors, different aspects of the persons behaviour were monitored. They measured the heart rate as well as the intervals between heartbeats to determine heart rate variability, a common measure for stress. After a few days, a clear pattern emerged which showed reduced stress levels.

Also interesting to note was how people went about their interactions during this ban on email. Naturally, most ended up having more face to face interactions with their co-workers and walking around the office more, all of which has been proven to have long term benefits. While completely cutting off from email isn't possible, not responding the very second you see a notification might still help.