I started a tradition last year of assessing the amount of email traffic I had read and created at work over the past year.  I’ve always rotated my email at the end of the year to archive the previous year’s significant and insignificant messages… but last year was the first time I’d really taken stock of the sheer volume of messages. 

The numbers aren’t perfect - I delete a lot of email, and don’t keep junk mail.  However, as I reviewed the results this year, I was amazed I had reduced the number of messages I sent while receiving significantly more email than the prior year.

Here’s my stats from 2007:

Number of Emails Received in 2007: 15,649
Number of Emails Written in 2007: 3,428

Given an average of 200 workdays per year, this works out to 78 messages received each day, and 17 messages written…

Compare this to my stats from 2006:

Number of Emails Received in 2006: 13,759
Number of Emails Written in 2006: 4,352

No wonder I’m tired at the end of the day!

Filed under: Technology