The Joys and Sorrows of Late-Night Email - The Atlantic

The Joys and Sorrows of Late-Night Email - The Atlantic: But in other white-collar industries—law, consulting, advertising, fashion, media, non-profits, fundraising, politics—individual workers are constantly working with new clients and partners, whose needs require constant contacting, pinging, base-touching, out-reaching, and so on. Email isn't just for your cross-country clients; it's just as likely to be for your cross-desk colleagues. The upshot is a ceaseless flow of correspondences that often bleeds over into dusk. Email consumes an average of 13 hours per week, according to a McKinsey Global Institute paper, or 28 percent of the average workweek. With the typical "knowledge" worker—that is: somebody whose professional output is creative—earning $75,000 a year, that means "the time spent on reading and answering email costs a company $20,990 per worker per year." (No wonder there are all these people trying to reform it.)