Storytime

I love books. I can't pass a bookstore, thrift store, library or garage sale without coming home with a treasure (or two or three).

I'm pretty sure I know exactly how this started. I was in second grade and was sent to school with a dime to buy a book at the used book sale (I will not even comment on how long ago this was). I remember holding that dime — which was a lot of money to an 8-year-old— and carefully walking around the tables, looking for the perfect book. There were so many. I knew then and there that when I grew up, I needed to have a lot of dimes so I could buy as many books as I wanted. Though we had a few books at home, my busy, working, parents were not great readers and the library was a car ride away, making trips there very infrequent.

I sat down at one point, overwhelmed with all the choices. My classmates had picked their prizes and were showing off the covers and flipping through the pages.

Quitting Time

Every day is not a crisis.

Yes, there may be a few times — a big important project, a looming deadline, an actual crisis — when it's necessary to check email 'round the clock. But other than that, do you really need to check your email constantly? Of course not.

Everyone seems to agree on that. Plenty of studies show that fixating on your email can be stressful and counterproductive. And there's lots of advice on how to wean yourself from the 24/7 email cycle.

All of which begs the question: What is a reasonable time to stop checking email at the end of the day, when there's no real crisis? What is reasonable for an employer to expect, and how much uninterrupted time is it realistic for employees to have? We set out to find out.