Random- about how many work emails do you get a day?

[Bernadine]

Just curious, because h is always amazed at how many I get. I’d say at least 100/day, probably between 100-125 on average.

[fryjack2]

Ones that pertain to just me, or the ones I am on a DL for and don't really need to read?

On any given day, between 100-? Depends on what is going on at work.

[glw]

About 20, and some are auto-notifications.

[kadams767]

Probably about 100-150 on a slow day. During my busy seasons, a typical day is closer to 300 and if a deal is closing, 500. It is so overwhelming, and part of why I hate the move to more people working from home/remotely.

[lilypad1126]

Today I'm already over 100 and it's only 3pm here. Between that and my 6 hours of meetings, I'm struggling to get any work done. And clearly in my 5 minute break, I'm here and procrastinating actual work b/c my brain is fried.

[Deleted]

About 5. But that's because we're a Slack organization.

[Deleted]

Probably around 100, about a third to half of which are automated/FYI-type messages that I don't need to act upon. My H easily gets 200, if not more, but a lot of those are automated.

[MDmomof2]

Probably 10-15 I need to handle/respond to and another 10-15 IMs I need to deal with. I would say I get 20ish emails that are meeting invites/autoresponders/delete immediately types.

[jinkies]

I think I got around 30 today, but frankly I have not done much work. It would have been more if I had been sending out more/responding.

100+ every day seems like a lot though. I would guess I get maybe 50-75 on busy days.

[elefun]

About 20

[Cappy]

In normal times (before covid impacted my role) 100-150/day, mostly requiring some action/project vs. just a response. Probably 95% of my workload comes through email though.

[bex1973]

Probably 30-40. But some I delete right away like campus events, auto notifications, software notifications or the like. I would probably get more but most folks will IM messages with quick questions versus emailing - I prefer that.

[circa1978]

Easily more than 100 in my priority inbox. It would be more but we use a project management software and chat in our division so 90 percent of communication is done that way, plus we very often text.

[sugarbear1]

Probably 20.
I'm a middle school teacher. Assuming I am not getting a million share requests from something I screwed up in Google Classroom, I'd say 15-20 per day.

[msmerymac]

80-100, including things like meeting acceptance notifications and routine things. I work in client services for an agency, though, so the vast majority of my job is communicating with clients, mostly through email, or scheduling and running meetings and updates, followed by follow up emails.

[mcmel]

About ten a day but I'm low man on the totem pole.

[acr]

Not many - but lots of Slack messages and meetings instead.

[HRH Queen Dick I, Orphan]

I will ban the first person who posts a screenshot of 10k unread messages or whatever.

[mysteriouswife]

100s. I was out the week of Thanksgiving. Two days were company wide holidays. I had over 1300 when I returned.

Today I logged in with 60 in my personal. 45 were actionable for me. My department email will fluctuate. Some days we have 300+ others we have 50.

ETA- a lot of these are auto generated and get moved to a folder. I select read all and search for what I need. Most of the time it’s notification something is finally moving.

[mysteriouswife]

Jan 20, 2022 15:54:14 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

Probably about 100-150 on a slow day. During my busy seasons, a typical day is closer to 300 and if a deal is closing, 500. It is so overwhelming, and part of why I hate the move to more people working from home/remotely.

May I ask how remote makes this worse?

More meetings or people stopping by my desk would cause me stress. I love emails over in-person communication. It allows me to hold myself and others accountable

[definitelyO]

depends - maybe 200ish?

[bcv513]

We just got slack and I hate it! It’s just different email.

I get about 100 a day. It has definitely picked way up since remote working. We used to just pop in to talk to people instead.

[tiki]

I'm also at a Slack org now so there's no way to know how many incoming messages I get in a day.

When I worked at larger companies 100-300 emails / day was typical, and in one job I calculated that I'd sent an email on average of every 7 business day minutes. I do not miss the time spent managing all of that, even if just to mark as read, file, or delete.

[kadams767]

Jan 20, 2022 16:39:20 GMT -5 mysteriouswife said:

Jan 20, 2022 15:54:14 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

Probably about 100-150 on a slow day. During my busy seasons, a typical day is closer to 300 and if a deal is closing, 500. It is so overwhelming, and part of why I hate the move to more people working from home/remotely.

May I ask how remote makes this worse?

More meetings or people stopping by my desk would cause me stress. I love emails over in-person communication. It allows me to hold myself and others accountable

Everything that previously was done in person now comes through mostly via an email (or via our internal messaging/Teams, which is also annoying to run all day).  

So even pre-Covid, my job was obviously already fairly email-heavy.  It's not like I went from 50 emails to 500 overnight here.  But previously, my officemates and I worked collaboratively in person, in-office.  So if there was a project conference call or meeting, for example, we would attend together.  So our internal communications regarding said meeting were done during and immediately-post meeting - now every question or follow-up stemming from the meetings comes via an email or internal message.  And everything that we would normally explain in person often takes several back-and-forth messages.  Additionally, we used to close deals in person, which is often a full day to two day process.  As you can imagine, there are a lot of documents involved if it takes two days to complete the closing process.  Now that process takes place electronically, with every change that we used to handle in person having to go back through to everyone on a distribution list that is between 20-50 people.  For several days.  

I'm not sure how anyone handles this volume of email and isn't stressed out about it.  I'm fine holding myself and others accountable, but there is no way to not miss things or fall behind when you have this many emails to track, along with doing the actual work.  

[mysteriouswife]

Jan 20, 2022 16:54:34 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

Jan 20, 2022 16:39:20 GMT -5 mysteriouswife said:

May I ask how remote makes this worse?

More meetings or people stopping by my desk would cause me stress. I love emails over in-person communication. It allows me to hold myself and others accountable

Everything that previously was done in person now comes through mostly via an email (or via our internal messaging/Teams, which is also annoying to run all day).  

So even pre-Covid, my job was obviously already fairly email-heavy.  It's not like I went from 50 emails to 500 overnight here.  But previously, my officemates and I worked collaboratively in person, in-office.  So if there was a project conference call or meeting, for example, we would attend together.  So our internal communications regarding said meeting were done during and immediately-post meeting - now every question or follow-up stemming from the meetings comes via an email or internal message.  And everything that we would normally explain in person often takes several back-and-forth messages.  Additionally, we used to close deals in person, which is often a full day to two day process.  As you can imagine, there are a lot of documents involved if it takes two days to complete the closing process.  Now that process takes place electronically, with every change that we used to handle in person having to go back through to everyone on a distribution list that is between 20-50 people.  For several days.  

I'm not sure how anyone handles this volume of email and isn't stressed out about it.  I'm fine holding myself and others accountable, but there is no way to not miss things or fall behind when you have this many emails to track, along with doing the actual work.  

I can only speak for myself, but I do occasionally lose track. It’s overwhelming and stressful. My current job as a whole is drowning. So I sympathize. Thank you for explaining your stand point. I always like hearing other perspectives on the work at home “argument” (for lack of better terms)

[seeyalater52]

I used to get about 400 a day at my old job. I was constantly overwhelmed. Now I’m brand new and no one knows who I am yet so it’s more like 50-100 a day.

[Deleted]

Around 250/day. I currently have 1853 unread emails in my inbox.

[kadams767]

Jan 20, 2022 16:57:19 GMT -5 mysteriouswife said:

Jan 20, 2022 16:54:34 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

Everything that previously was done in person now comes through mostly via an email (or via our internal messaging/Teams, which is also annoying to run all day).  

So even pre-Covid, my job was obviously already fairly email-heavy.  It's not like I went from 50 emails to 500 overnight here.  But previously, my officemates and I worked collaboratively in person, in-office.  So if there was a project conference call or meeting, for example, we would attend together.  So our internal communications regarding said meeting were done during and immediately-post meeting - now every question or follow-up stemming from the meetings comes via an email or internal message.  And everything that we would normally explain in person often takes several back-and-forth messages.  Additionally, we used to close deals in person, which is often a full day to two day process.  As you can imagine, there are a lot of documents involved if it takes two days to complete the closing process.  Now that process takes place electronically, with every change that we used to handle in person having to go back through to everyone on a distribution list that is between 20-50 people.  For several days.  

I'm not sure how anyone handles this volume of email and isn't stressed out about it.  I'm fine holding myself and others accountable, but there is no way to not miss things or fall behind when you have this many emails to track, along with doing the actual work.  

I can only speak for myself, but I do occasionally lose track. It’s overwhelming and stressful. My current job as a whole is drowning. So I sympathize. Thank you for explaining your stand point. I always like hearing other perspectives on the work at home “argument” (for lack of better terms)

I wish I knew what the answer was.  As management, I want to be flexible and offer WFH as a benefit to our employees, I know the world is changing and this is what workers want.  But I've been drowning and constantly stressed out since we went mostly remote when the pandemic started.  I feel like I spend most of my normal working hours herding cats and just trying to stay above the fray, and then I have to catch up on "real work" during off hours like early morning and late night.  It's not sustainable, IMO.  

I personally advocate for a flex-schedule, with a mix of in-office and WFH time.  

[icedcoffee]

Wtf is slack?

Too many! Maybe 50-100 in my main inbox and another 100 or more in boxes I help monitor.

[icedcoffee]

Ok I googled slack and it looks awful. No thanks. Looks like fancy MS Teams? I’ll keep email.