Hold the front page: a recent study has found that poorly written emails are painful, time-wasting, and stressful. This is something most of us probably already knew, but it is comforting to know that it isn’t just us being individually grumpy – it’s a trend.

The study was among a group that you might imagine could write a decent email – academics at an University. I haven’t seen the detail of the study, but have monitored the media coverage. Just over 200 people were involved in the study. The reports’ author, Rowena Brown, says “feeling stressed, overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted are other common strains caused by emails.” Right.

Most interestingly, the same study uncovered a mighty contradiction. It found that the more emails arriving in a person’s Inbox, the higher that person’s job satisfaction.

Why might this be? One implication could be that the volume of email an individual receives is an electronic badge of honour. Another, that we all crave being connected with people, and the more email that arrives the more connected we feel. Further, the more email the more important we feel.

I have to say that the amount of email I personally receive is something I am neither proud of, nor enjoy, and I feel it often stops me connecting with the people I want to connect with. My daughter, on the other hand, tells me when she doesn’t receive much email in a day that’s “a bad day at the office”. And she’s not talking about Facebook, either.

In preparing for our own study of email usage habits we have received the much the same anecdotal feedback about email from our survey design test group. On the one hand our testers complained about the volume of email causing them stress; on the other hand, they felt pretty unloved if they didn’t get lots of email.

There does not appear to be much hard evidence out there as to what a “large amount’ of email per day actually means.

In our scan of the web for surveys about the volume of email usage, which has taken several weeks, there are numerous mentions of “recent research” showing “typical users” who receive “about X” number of emails a day. But we have struggled to find the actual primary research these mentions are based upon. (Any hints on where to find them would be most appreciated.)

As interesting is the wide disparity in the average number of emails these mentions claim a typical user receives in a day – anywhere from 50 to 250 according to the quotes we have seen (but usually without citations).

Given email is probably the #1 means of communication by knowledge workers at their workplace, the number of large-sample research studies seems very low.

Which category of email user do you fall into? Stressed or satisfied, or as the research suggests, do you have a foot in both camps? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Alistair Gordon