office hours

Take Your Work Email Off Your Phone Right Now

Put down the phone.
Put down the phone. Photo: champja/Getty Images

If you haven’t already made a New Year’s resolution, how’s this for inspiration? A new survey performed by the Future Work Centre of London has discovered that people who get their work email on their personal phones are more likely to feel frustrated and anxious. Oh, you’re not even reading this because you’re too busy checking your work email? Why not take it off your phone while you still can?

The Future Work Centre surveyed just under 2,000 residents of the U.K., asking questions about “attitudes towards email, daily use of email, aspects of personality, experience of the interface between work and home (sometimes called ‘work-life balance’) and the technology people use to access their email.” It’s a cross-sectional survey, so the Centre can’t attribute causality, but it found “a strong significant correlation” between getting push emails on your phone and feeling the pressure to remain connected at all times.

The Centre offers some solutions: Try only turning your email application on when you want to use it, or switch off notifications on your email app so that you aren’t bombarded by a blinking red light every time an email comes in. Other sources suggest even implementing an email curfew; Paul Ainsworth asks in The Telegraph, “Why not stop servers pushing emails after 6pm until 7am the next day?”

Or just go full delete and live ya’ life.

Take Your Work Email Off Your Phone Right Now