Crazy at work? It may just be office ADD

Case Study 2
Subject: Bill Phillips
Problem: Overconnected

As much as modern technology drives us crazy, many of us can't get enough of it. "I check e-mail hundreds of times a day," says Bill Phillips, the magazine's executive editor. It's like an Information Age version of a nicotine addiction: the constant need to hit Send/Receive or glance at our PDAs in order to find out whether somebody somewhere is trying to tell us (or sell us) something.

Repeatedly refreshing your inbox at work has its own cost, but the bigger problem is the ability to read e-mail anytime, anywhere, which has obliterated the wall between home and office, work and play. "If I weren't checking e-mail 30 times in an evening, would I be writing a book?" Bill wonders. And this is to say nothing of the toll that e-mail addiction can take on personal relationships. Bill says that although his wife rarely complains, she did balk when he brought his BlackBerry on vacation and sat on the beach, firing messages back to the MH mother ship.

Why are we compelled to check our messages constantly, even though most of what we receive is only junk or more work? Sometimes it's pure fear: If you've taught your supervisor or clients that you respond to e-mail in 5 minutes, even on weekends, you become afraid of not knowing what's in your inbox. More often, though, what keeps us coming back is the possibility of a thrill: information we need for a project, great news about something, positive feedback from a colleague or superior.

Tom Stafford, Ph.D., a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Sheffield in Britain and coauthor of the book "Mind Hacks," believes that what's at work with e-mail addiction is classic psychological behaviorism: operant conditioning 101. Basic psych theory holds that the best way to reinforce behavior is to reward it — but not all the time, only sometimes. If you want a rat to run through a maze, give him a piece of cheese when he makes it all the way through, but only occasionally, and at random intervals.

Stafford says there's a logic to this: The rat doesn't know whether the rewards have disappeared for good, so he'll run through the maze again and again, hoping that this time the piece of cheese will be there. The same mechanism operates with us and e-mail. We check constantly because every once in a while we receive positive reinforcement. In the end we're just rats looking for a piece of cheese.

Disable your distractions

Talk to your boss. Or your staff. Or your girlfriend. Or whoever compels you to constantly check your e-mail. Discuss whether an instant response during work hours is really necessary. In most cases the answer is no, which means that checking e-mail, say, every couple of hours should be fine. "It's important for managers to have discussions about brain management. It's not a power discussion. You all have the same goal," Dr. Hallowell says.

Related stories from Men's Health Focus, Dammit! The Email To-Don’t List! 5 Things Never To Say at the Office The Art of Self Promotion Worry Your Way to the Top

Change the office rules. Microsoft's Eric Horvitz has a name for the phenomenon of checking e-mail even when we're not at work: "competitive awareness." Dr. Hallowell says the only way to overcome it is with an organization-wide change of culture. "You need an agreed-on policy, rather than unwritten heroism." For instance, ban office e-mails between, say, 8 p.m. and 10 a.m. If you know it's against the rules to send, there's no need to stop watching "Lost" to see whether you've received anything.

Case Study 3
Subject: Adam Campbell
Problem: In-Basket Case

Dr. Hallowell says that when it comes to technology, we tend to operate in one of two modes. The first, when we're performing well, he calls "C-state," C standing for calm, cool, collected. Its opposite is "F-state," meaning flustered, frazzled, frantic. Not coincidentally, the symptoms of F-state look a lot like those of ADD: difficulty focusing for more than a few seconds; a tendency to have a lot of projects going at once, with trouble completing any of them; a constant search for stimulation; and trouble with time management, including a tendency to procrastinate. "The busier you become, the less sense of time you feel, so that pretty soon there are only two times in your mind: now and not now," Dr. Hallowell says. "You try desperately to put as much as you can into the pile of not now."

Many days, Adam might as well have an F stamped on his forehead. Like everyone else, he's constantly interrupted by e-mail at work — except that when he opens a message, he frequently puts it aside until later. Hence his backlog of 3,200 messages. He's also unable to cut the cord between work and home. When he and his wife came home from a party one recent weekend, she pointed out that he checked his e-mail before he even took his coat off. Most significantly, despite putting in 12-hour days, he feels as if the bombardment of messages has him constantly overwhelmed.

Obviously, F-state can take its toll at work. But the problems run deeper. Dr. Hallowell says that in a 1970 paper called "The Experience of Living in Cities," the psychologist Stanley Milgram foreshadowed what many of us are now experiencing. Intrigued by the 1964 murder of a New York City woman named Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death as 38 people watched from their apartments and didn't call the police, Milgram was able to show that the more data we process, the more we're forced to screen out. It's why people who live in small towns tend to make eye contact and say hello when they pass each other on the sidewalk, while people who live in cities pass each other blankly. Milgram said people's "span of sympathy" decreases as the amount of data they have to process increases.

"This is the great danger of mental overload," Dr. Hallowell says. "You lose your judgment and ability to empathize with other people." It may be the greatest irony of the age we live in: The more ways we have to connect to one another, the less connected we really are.

Disable your distractions

Empty your inbox. But once you do it, you need to put yourself on a program. Dr. Hallowell's mantra is the classic "OHIO": only handle it once. Set aside a few specific times during the day to read e-mail — say, 10 a.m., after lunch, 3:30 p.m. — and when you do, act on the messages right away: respond, delete, forward, file. And allow yourself a few minutes at the end of the workday to zero-out your inbox.

Build the walls back up. Ultimately, the only way to stay in control of message overload, the only way to avoid F-state, is to artificially impose the boundaries that once existed naturally. More than anything, that means avoiding the temptation to check work e-mail from home. "Do the e-mails you receive after you leave the office need to be responded to?" Dr. Hallowell asks Adam. Adam shakes his head. "Then don't look at them. Tell yourself what you just said: It doesn't matter." In the beginning, it will be difficult. But eventually a new pattern will take hold and the fight will have been worth it

MORE FROM MENTAL HEALTH

Mental health Section Front

Suicides raise worries about recession’s real cost Chill: A little stress may help you live longer Suicide prevention groups protest ‘The Office’ Tokyo train stations use lights to stem suicides Why memory lane is such a mortifying stroll Kids on psych drugs have alarming weight gain Self-help course may have led to her suicide Study: Working past retirement boosts health Youth driving discussions about suicide Mediterranean diet cuts depression risk Mental health Section Front   Add Mental health headlines to your news reader: