Are your emails stressing you out?

So here’s the scene: You’ve clocked out of work and are on the way home thinking of what to have for dinner when a flashing light on your smartphone notifies you of incoming emails. Without a doubt you know it’s your boss or colleague and your heart rate picks up, wondering what now?

If you’ve found yourself in that situation, where the mere notification of emails sends you into a panic attack, you’re not alone. New research from Germany’s University of Hamburg found that people who were expected to be available via email after work were more stressed out than people who knew they were free of work responsibilities once they left the office.

Psychologists conducting the study asked 132 people from 13 workplaces to complete a survey in addition to providing saliva samples for cortisol measurement. For four days, the employees were expected to reply work emails at any time, while for the other four days they knew they didn’t have to respond to emails.

The returning samples of saliva found that those who were expected to deal with work emails after office hours had a higher level of the stress hormone cortisol compared to those who had no email obligations, proving that work is not only eating up more of our free time, but also destroying our health as increased cortisol levels leads to gastrointestinal problems, cardiovascular disease, a weakened immune system and other unhealthy conditions.

For the sake of our health and mental sanity, it’s time we simply turn off our email notifications once we clock out of work. You owe yourself that much after a hard day’s work at the office.

Karen George

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