I once had a brain that could clamp down on details and store a tardy email response at the forefront of my brain until I clicked, “Send.” Now the need to follow up on work emails disturbs my REM sleep like the “I slept through my final exam” nightmare. I know I am hardly alone.
According to the Radicati Group, a technology market research firm in Palo Alto, California, the average corporate email user received 126 email messages per day in 2006, which was an increase of 55 percent since 2003. They speculate that if workers spend an average of one minute reading and responding to each message, an inundation of email traffic can consume more than a quarter of the eight hour work day. With an average number of emails sent per day to be around 183 billion in 2006, and that number increasing daily, I wonder what email users do? One answer is to file email bankruptcy.
Chapter 11
That’s what Rebecca Burns did. As Editor in Chief of Atlanta Magazine, she had two major projects piled on top of her daily responsibilities and an inbox with 3,000 unanswered emails. When she became sick over the holidays last year, everything compounded, so she sent a mass email to coworkers and freelancers.
“[There was] a huge backlog that I would never be able to deal with. The email stated this was a one-time deal and that if I owed anyone email, they should contact me because I would never get through the inbox to get back to them … then I emptied the inbox and moved on.”
The idea of selecting all and hitting “Delete” might feel like freedom for some, but for women like Rebecca (who explained with an email back to me only three days later), filing email bankruptcy isn’t routine.
“I don’t plan to do it again but it was a great way to get caught up … I am normally very organized and make a habit of cleaning out my email box and getting caught up once a week. In fact, I am writing back to you as part of that process,” she wrote.
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