---
title: email analysis
date: "2005-02-16T12:00:00Z"
categories:
  - links
wp_id: 744
description: I examine Marc Eisenstadt’s 15-year email stats showing a 2.5-hour daily drain despite a disciplined approach. I also look at Donald Knuth’s famous decision to stop using email in 1990 to protect his research time.
keywords: [email productivity, marc eisenstadt, donald knuth, workflow, time management, communication costs]
---

Marc Eisenstadt has analysed [15 years of email](http://www.corante.com/getreal/archives/2005/02/11/eight_years_of_email_stats_pass_1.php).

> ... it is trivially easy to get to 2.5 hours per workday assuming a fairly ruthless, 'one-touch', knee-jerk email interaction regime. And worse if you deviate from the regime.
>
> Then there are other sources of workflow: blogs, aggregator summaries, phone calls (rare, but I still allow one or two), cell-phone, text message, instant messaging (my buddy list is very large, and most of them are work-related).

Interesting that [Knuth opted out of email](http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html) in 1990.

---

## Comments

<!-- wp-comments-start -->

- **Aditya Chaturvedi** _16 Feb 2005 12:00 pm_:
  Interesting Analysis
- **m1108739289513** _16 Feb 2005 12:00 pm_:
  See [this dilbert](http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2005915440210.gif) on email and its sequel next day
- **S Anand** _16 Feb 2005 12:00 pm_:
  After reading this article, I turned off my e-mail alert. It is amazing how much distraction it reduces.

<!-- wp-comments-end -->