This is the first in a twelve-part series exploring Why Businesses Don’t Collaborate.
The full research report is available for Download. Please download and reuse this graphic! Just make sure to give attribution to Scott Abel and Stewart Mader, and link back to this article.

Question

We wanted to know how many messages people receive on a daily basis:

82% of respondents receive dozens of emails on a daily basis. The comments indicate that people consider email a significant time management issue, and the important information often gets lost in the volume of email.

Survey Comments

• It is a challenge to absorb, respond, file, and otherwise manage email and also get other work done.
• About 30% are actionable, 35% have content that might be useful now or later (I’ll skim), and the rest is unimportant.
• I can read, respond to, file, delete or otherwise meaningfully manage only about 25% of the email I receive.
• Email is a significant time management issue.
• Many are a waste of bandwidth.
• Many times, a single e-mail will launch a multiple e-mail conversation.
  I get copied on a lot of our process and project tracking emails, but auto-move those into folders for checking less frequently.