The Science Behind Inbox Anxiety
Summary
The reason why you feel guilty and anxious about all of those unread emails and whatsapp messages - and what to do about it.
It’s not your fault, it’s your paleolithic brain attempting to operate in a digital world
Constant availability isn't speeding you up - it's slowing you down
Time-boxing is the solution and system that will give you control back
It’s okay to leave some emails and messages unread for periods of time
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Inbox guilt
Question for you: those un-read emails and messages sitting in your inbox and on your phone, how do they make you feel? Perhaps they fill you with a little anxiety, maybe even guilt?
I know that’s how I sometimes feel about them.
The friend who’s whatsapp I feel guilty for not having responded to yet, or the email that has been sitting for what feels like an embarrassing amount of time in my inbox with no response.
It got me thinking, how can a few letters of text on a screen elicit such powerful emotions within us?
Why we experience inbox guilt
Imagine for a moment that it is 300,000 years ago, you are sat around the camp fire sharpening your hunting spear, fire flickering, the smell of the sizzling Wooly Mammoth wafting through the camp.
John, one of your fellow tribesmen comes up to you and taps you on the shoulder. You notice him tapping, but you don’t respond. He continues to tap you on the shoulder, a little harder this time. Still no response. After a few minutes John gives up and walks away upset, disrespected, angry.
Now, this isn’t the first time you’ve done this. You did it to Karen the other day too. Your tribe now feel that they can no longer rely on you to help out when needed. Next thing you know, you’ve been booted out of the camp. Left to fend for yourself in the harsh world of the Savannah. Dealt, what is essentially, a death sentence.
Now, fast forward to today, and when you see an email from a client or a WhatsApp message from an old friend, we feel that tapping on the shoulder. Our paleolithic brain is saying that if we do not respond, if we ignore them, we will be disrespecting our social circles and putting ourselves at risk of being kicked out of the tribe.
This hard-wiring has a name - "tendency for reciprocity” - the feeling of being obliged to respond in kind when someone reaches out to us. This was essential for our survival as a species. We had to cooperate, exchange support and resources, and help each other in order to ensure that we passed our genes on.
But herein lies the problem: only so many people can physically tap you on the shoulder at the same time, now - with online communication - that number is unlimited. We now have digital shoulder taps coming at us from all angles, across multiple platforms, at all times of the day.
This hard-wired tendency for reciprocity has therefore become maladaptive and leads to social stress, because we feel that we should be keeping up but we simply can’t. And it is this social stress that is driving those feelings of anxiety and guilt around your unread emails and messages.
So, what do we do? The now traditional model is to sit at our desk with our email inbox and MS Teams messages open all day, our phone sitting beside us. Then, as we attempt to focus on a cognitively demanding piece of work, as soon as messages, emails and push notifications come in, we constantly switch between them. All in the vain attempt to try to stay on top of everything.
We get to lunch mentally exhausted. Fast forward to the end of what has felt like an incredibly busy day, and we are sitting at dinner, picking at our lasagna and scratching our brain, left wondering what it was we actually achieved that day.
The report wasn’t finished, the email inbox only grew and there are now more unread whatsapp to respond to.
How to overcome inbox guilt
So here's an alternative approach: time-boxing. Identifying specific times of the day when we will check and respond to email and messages.
Perhaps you have a couple of 1 hour time-boxed slots for email during the day and a couple of more frequent, shorter blocks for work chat messages. For personal whatsapp and email that aren’t time sensitive, perhaps you respond to those while on the sofa at home in the evening when dinner is in the oven. Maybe you respond to some personal messages then and others on the weekend when you have more time.
Sure, we will of course need, and want, to have caveats with our system - such as always being available during the day for our kids, partner or an elderly parent. Or if we are approaching a deadline at work. But if we want to take back control of our day and life, it is important that we at least have a system in the first place. And it’s not just a systems upgrade that we need, we also need a mindset shift too. We need to become comfortable with the fact that it is okay to leave certain emails and messages unread for periods of time.
“But Pat, my team and clients need me. I can’t afford to be away from my email or MS Team's messages for blocks of time in the day.” You might be thinking, and I totally understand. Perhaps you feel that your team will slow down if you aren’t there to respond to their questions immediately and that your clients will become frustrated. You are attempting to speed up by being constantly available but what is it actually costing you? I imagine your focus, your ability to be productive and efficient, to do the important work that the day demands of you.
No judgement, I was once there, thinking I was Usain Bolt sprinting through each day, responding to everything as it came in. But I then realised that I was caught in the “busy but unproductive” trap. I was in fact trying to sprint with a parachute on my back. My attempt to be constantly available was actually slowing me down and I couldn’t see it.
Robin Sharma once said: “You can either be on your phone or you can change the world - you can’t do both.” I believe that we can either be constantly available, or we can do great work - we can’t do both. So, what will you choose?
