Finding a Cure for Email Addiction

Is There a Cure?

Surprisingly, I found few online resources specifically aimed at email addiction. One is About.com's email addiction page. Two others are the Center for On-Line Addiction and an addiction resource site. I also found an online therapy site at which you can get help for Internet addiction through email consultation. (That's supposed to be a joke.)

Several readers offered practical tips for setting up folders in Outlook to solve this problem. But the latest software features cannot cure email addiction.

As one reader put it: "As for controlling the addiction, the first step, and the one that I fail, is wanting to. After that it is easy. Just set up your software to only check email every 15 minutes or half hour. Mine is set on every minute."

Jared Spool, Web usability expert and principal of User Interface Engineering, offers a useful perspective: "Email addiction is an old problem," he said. "People crave social interaction. It's like standing around the water cooler all day... Unfortunately, with email it looks like you're sitting at your computer working."

But, he added, "there are tricks... to this. If you feel you are losing productivity, you have to, in essence, close your office door. Only check email at certain times of the day. Turn off the ping."

How many times have I looked out my office window to notice blue sky and afternoon light -- and then looked up again "moments" later to discover that hours have passed, it's dark, and I missed the chance to get outside for a break?

So, here are my tips (which I have a hard time following):

Pull back from the computer.

Stand up, and take some deep breaths.

Look outside.

Go for a walk.

Pick up the phone.

Scratch a thank-you note on a piece of stationery and snail mail it to a colleague.

That last one was a great suggestion from a reader, who noted that his recipient replied by email.

Last week I wrote my column in record time. I didn't allow myself to check email until the afternoon. I had a whole morning of uninterrupted work at the keyboard, and it felt wonderful. I was calm and in control, even with a writing assignment due that day.

This week was a different story. As I was writing, I checked my inbox frequently (ahem) to reread all your responses and (of course) to check for new mail. It took much longer, and by the time I finished, I was pretty frazzled.

So keep those confessions coming. Saying it out loud is a great first step.

My name is Debbie, and I am addicted to email.

But enough mind-and-body tips. I'll be back to (business-to-) business next week with an update on tackling the problem of out-of-date email addresses with several new email national change of address (e-NCOA) technologies.