Who at a computer hasn't been roped in, lulled into passing seconds, then minutes, and finally an hour or more each day reading e-mail? That's what a recent survey of workers found — people are using, and abusing, e-mail for longer periods.

        Add up the weekly time spent receiving and answering e-mail, and you have more than one 40-hour workweek each year devoted to creating and answering messages.

        It's an insidious little cyberburp - these e-mail intrusions on the average workday.

        That is the conclusion of the research firm GartnerGroup, of Stamford, Conn., which found that one of four workers really can't tear themselves away from the PC. They spend more than an hour a day managing their e-mail.

        Not to worry, though.

        Most workers spend “only” 49 minutes a day on e-mail.

        What did people do with their time before e-mail arrived? Stand around the water cooler, perhaps? Maybe it's the lunch that stretches beyond the hourlong limit? At least e-mail is a gesture toward productivity.

Enough already

        The survey, which asked workers about their e-mail and instant-messaging use, also determined that about one of three e-mails is unnecessary.

        Those are the ones that start out with “Want to make $100,000 a year working out of your basement?”

        The research company offers a typical reaction to the news: It must stop.

        Managers should train employees to use e-mail more efficiently with distribution lists that deliver messages only to people who actually need the information.

        Maybe wasting time with e-mail is the only sane response to the onslaught of technology that has ripped through most lives and households in recent years.

        It almost goes without saying that added technology brings more stress and way less free time.

But babble is babble

        According to a four-year report about techno-stress by researchers Michelle M. Weil, a researcher with Human-Ware, and Larry D. Rosen, a researcher with Byte Back, there is no doubt that work technology has crept into our domestic lives.

        In 1995, about one in five executives received e-mail at home. By 1999, that number had tripled.

        About one of 10 clerical employees in 1995 had voice-mail access from home, according to the survey of 3,129 workers from Southern California. That number, too, tripled by 1999.

        What's more, the typical worker now uses technology at home after work hours about two to three hours a day compared with about one to two hours a day just five years ago.

        What it all means is that nobody should sweat the time spent each day answering e-mail.

        Cutting down on e-mail is not going to be an easy thing to do, anyhow.

        In many cases, e-mail allows people to cut out the chatter and actually avoid conversation - with all the hems and the haws that go along with talking. That can really be a drain on time and psychic energy.

        So then the question becomes: Which is worse? Babble at the water cooler or babble over an Intranet?

        Probably the former. Maybe the latter. Either way, the creep of technology is clear.

        And it's going to get worse before it gets better.

        E-mail jeckberg@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/eckberg.

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