More than one-third of workers are suffering e-mail overload. But, discovers Marjory McGinn, the simplest cure might be the best

BY 11 O'CLOCK in the morning, your inbox is groaning with 150 unread e-mails. Most of it's a surreal mish-mash of unwanted information: a sales pitch for Viagra; a ticking-off from the boss; a request from the kids to bring home fish and chips for dinner; and countless others sent for no reason at all other than that it's now so easy to send useless information at the touch of a button. And with each e-mail, there is the expectation of an instant response. But if you are one of a growing band of people suffering from the latest affliction, e-mail stress, you might find it easier to go for "select all" and then "delete".

It comes as no surprise that a study carried out by researchers from the University of Glasgow and University of Paisley has revealed that 34% of workers feel stressed by the number of e-mails they receive each day and the fact they feel obliged to answer them ASAP. More than half of those surveyed said they checked for new messages more than once an hour, while 35% admitted that they checked every 15 minutes, presumably more out of fear than joyful anticipation.

Dr Karen Renaud, senior lecturer in computing science at Glasgow University, who was part of the research team, says that while e-mail is an incomparable communication tool, people are struggling to keep pace with its growth. Last year one trillion business e-mails were sent worldwide.

"E-mail is still quite a new thing. We don't understand yet how it fits into our lives so that people can handle it," says Dr Renaud.

"People feel that those who send them e-mails are expecting a quick response, so the stress they feel is based on this pressure, especially if the person they get them from is higher up in the organisation. Employees should be made to understand that it's all right to wait for an hour to answer an e-mail. People need to take the attitude: I can deal with it but I have these other things to do as well.' If you're dealing with e-mails all day you are not getting other things done. If other people need to get something urgently from you, they will come and see you or contact you by telephone."

Dr Renaud - who, incidentally, receives around 50 e-mails a day during term time - says it's not just the number of messages that stresses people but additional concerns such as the e-mail notifier alerting you to the arrival of a new message. "Lots of people think that kind of thing is really cool," she says. "I have a notifier myself - but if I'm busy writing a paper, it damages my train of thought. My advice is to switch it off."

Time-management expert Jacqueline Atkinson, who is also professor of mental health policy at Glasgow University, believes e-mail stress may just be a new spin on an old problem. In other words, those people who quake at the daily onslaught of e-mails and let them pile up in their inbox would have felt defeated by accumulating paperwork in days gone by.

Atkinson, who regularly receives around 140 e-mails a day, says: "You can be a hoarder and be chaotic in the way you manage them, just as you can with paper documents. People can derive a sense of security from hanging on to information, so they know it's always there."

E-mails are now part of our 24/7 culture, in which we're always "on" and available, and bombarded with information whether we want it or not. New portable devices such as the BlackBerry mean e-mails can be pinged at you day and night, wherever you are. While the cyber-savvy may enjoy this imposition, most people find it invasive.

Paddy O'Donnell, professor of psychology at Glasgow University, receives around 150 e-mails a day. He says they may have made our working lives more efficient, but there is a downside. "You need to have a division between work and home life. You need a safe area, where you don't have demands made on you. You don't know what you're going to find each time you open up an e-mail. It's an uncertain world," he says. Added anxiety can come from the fear that opening an e-mail will unleash a virus into the computer system, something that is more worrying for those who work at home, or in small organisations.

Scott Crabbe, 30, who works as a PA for the chief executive and managing director at Barrhead Travel in Glasgow, says he is extremely organised. Dealing with the 50 to 100 e-mails he gets every day is "an absolute breeze" - not surprising, perhaps, when you consider that he used to receive thousands a day before the company's spam filter was updated six months ago.

"I used to come in on a Monday morning and there would be at least 4000 e-mails in the inbox, most of which was spam that had come in over the weekend. I would come in half an hour earlier on a Monday and just get on with them.

"This industry is always busy.

E-mails come from tour operators and clients and there are also a lot of internal e-mails. I check my messages about every five to 10 minutes, and I try to deal with them as they come in. With e-mails that can be actioned later, I mark them as unread and put them in folders I've set up under various subject headings."

Professor O'Donnell says some people feel controlled by their e-mails. "From a managerial point of view, it extends the range of people that managers can supervise, which means we are under pressure all the time," he says. "One manager can control 50 people whereas previously they had to struggle to control five. You can send an e-mail to 50 people and monitor them more easily than walking through 50 doors to see people. Work becomes more labelled, parcelled and supervised, and if you're at the sharp end of that it can become stressful."

Then there's the fact that e-mails save us from having to speak to, or see, people. Many people dislike e-mails because of their techno-coldness and the fact they make it easier to dispense with difficult or sensitive matters in a brief and brittle manner. Compared to telephone calls or face-to-face meetings, they also make it easier to play for time. How many of us have phoned someone with a query only to be asked to put it in an e-mail - meaning two actions instead of just the one? So pervasive are e-mails, along with text messaging and voicemail, that it is possible - especially for people who work at home - to go through a whole working day without hearing another real live human voice.

O'Donnell says e-mails should always be viewed as an adjunct to direct communications with people, not a substitute. "All our systems for judging people evolved in face-to-face interaction. We learned to trust others or be suspicious of them according to their face, voice and sheer physical presence. Now we don't have that exclusively.

"If our work environment forces us to use e-mail as the only mode of communication, we will feel socially isolated. To develop psychologically, we all need the experience of communicating directly with people. When we don't have that, it can be detrimental. We're not using the full range of communication skills any more, which is important."

Perhaps if we all went back to talking more, we could put an end to our cyberstress and could concentrate on the things that are really worth worrying about.

How to cope with a bursting inbox
Jacqueline Atkinson, a time-management expert, recommends treating e-mails and computer documents as you would conventional letters and paperwork: they have no more urgency or validity. Here's some other sound advice:

• Deal with your e-mails at set times during the day.
• Recognise spam and delete it immediately, preferably before you've opened it.
• If e-mails aren't urgent but need a response, put them in specially marked folders and look at them later on.
• When sending an e-mail, make the subject line as informative and interesting as possible so people are more likely to open it instead of binning it.
• Don't put a "high priority" marker on e-mails unless they really are urgent, or you will become the cyber-equivalent of the boy who cried wolf.
• Don't reply to e-mails unless it's necessary. Many of them are sent to you for your information only.
• Don't write anything in e-mails you wouldn't otherwise commit to paper. Gossiping about your boss on e-mail will come back to haunt you.