The Trouble with Harvard’s Email Culture

There are no official statistics that document how often the average Harvard student checks his or her inbox, but if three-quarters of U.S. employees surveyed by GFI Software reply within an hour of receiving an email, then the number on our campus is probably even higher. Even as I write this, despite the knowledge that my inbox has not been filled for weeks, I find my eyes drawn toward the tab that keeps it open. And it’s no secret that Harvard has an email-centric culture. In many ways, it makes sense: It’s the fastest and easiest way to reach large groups of people, and it’s the go-to method for correspondence because it lets us avoid the intimacy of phone calls or face-to-face communication.

Moreover, learning to reply to emails quickly is essential to preparing for careers in any field: 95 percent of workers surveyed expect a response within a day, and nearly half expect a reply within an hour, according to a GFI Software survey of 503 employees in U.S. workplaces. Yet as new research has helped reveal, the frequency with which we check our emails could be a significant cause of added stress. Removing the importance of email on campus or in future corporate environments is not a realistic or arguably even beneficial goal. However, re-evaluating the nature with which we approach emails may be worthwhile for its effect on our productivity and mental health.

When we graduate from Harvard, we will enter a world in which 60 percent of professionals spend nearly five hours per weekend just scanning their email. At school, there are no “off” hours. We’re expected to respond at any time. If we as college students live in a culture where more than half of employees surveyed regularly check their email past 11 pm (6% even check when they or their spouses are in labor), what will the culture be like when we enter the workforce?

As Harvard professor Leslie Perlow has found, this greater connectivity does not always correspond to greater productivity: When looking at a team at the Boston Consulting Group, half said they checked their email “continuously” while on vacation. When those hours were restricted, the employees all exhibited lower stress levels, higher satisfaction with their jobs, and a significantly shorter working week without any loss in productivity. The findings were so influential that the policy has been expanded throughout the entire company, yet one does not need to wait for the junior year recruiting season to start learning from those results. Differentiating between compulsive checking and productive necessity is worthwhile because blind usage has consequences that extend beyond just wasted time.

Furthermore, when researchers at the University of British Columbia restricted the number of times participants could check their email to three times a day and compared it to those who had no limit, the constantly monitored inbox was again no more efficient than those who tuned in more rarely. Because the human mind cannot perform two tasks simultaneously, expectations that we do so reduce our mental capabilities, make us worse at accomplishing the tasks that we need to, and limit our abilities to engage in real interaction. As MIT professor and author Sherry Turkle has explained, “Technology doesn’t just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we do but who we are. . . [W]e have learned to put our conversations ‘on pause’ when we send or receive . . . an email. When you get accustomed to a life of stops and starts, you get less accustomed to reflecting on where you are and what you are thinking.”

Although this problem of email culture is one not restricted to Harvard’s campus, the earlier that these habits crystallize, the harder they will likely be to break. In the study described above, those who were instructed to check their email three times a day more often than not reported that they had checked almost five times. Since most of the emails in our inbox are likely reminders from list-servs we mistakenly joined during our freshman fall, the likelihood that what we’re checking is important is even lower. Our phones have made it easier to be “available” at all times. But when the ability to communicate is restricted, not freed, by this constant access, it may be time to reconsider how often that inbox should be refreshed.

Caie C. Kelley ’18, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Weld Hall.