“Struggling to cope with a deluge of emails is leaving staff tired, frustrated and unproductive, researchers from Glasgow and Paisley universities found.

“More than a third – 34 per cent – said they checked their inbox every 15 minutes and 64 per cent said they looked more than once an hour.” – reports the Telegraph today. Not surprising that in this interconnected, always-on, always contactable world we’re suffering more stress and getting stressed at work.

When I was young, I assumed stress was a psychological issue, something that could be ‘fixed’ by thinking ‘happy thoughts’; now, thanks to education and experience I know that stress is a physical issue as well, and the stress hormones and hypersensitivity that stress brings can damages one’s body, organs and sleep, leading to serious chronic ilnesses.

The world can seem very fast-paced these days, and the best email advice is to check your inbox only twice a day, and deal with each message as it needs dealing with. If you have something urgent to say, pick up the phone and ‘touch somebody’!