Why do people have so much anxiety about e-mail?

Why do people have so much anxiety about e-mail?

Tim Burress (E-mail Etiquette and Organization Specialist) gives expert video advice on: What are the consequences of inappropriate e-mail?; Can I retract an e-mail I send? and more...

There is a very visceral or emotional feeling to e-mail. In other words, when people get a lot of e-mail their blood pressure rises. Their heart rate rises. They get very anxious. They want to get to the bottom. The whole objective for a lot of people in a day is to get to the white space, meaning the white space at the bottom of their in-box. So they spend most of the day trying to process through these e-mails as quickly as they can. It is almost like a hot potato. Instead of having it end in my in-box, I am going to send it to someone else. And so we have this very emotional good feeling when we get to the bottom of our in-box and we are not really thinking about the sender, or the receiver, excuse me, we are thinking more about the sender.