We have become email addicts. And when we aren’t within email range, many of us start to twitch, just like an addict without their fix. I asked several people at our Breakaway Xchange conference in San Diego this week what do they do with emails when they are vacation. The depressing consensus was that even then, most still regularly check email. Many had developed interesting habits to try to avoid exposing their fellow family members to this nasty habit: doing it late at night or in the early morning hours when the rest of the brood is fast asleep. Or staying back while the family does some fun activity so the emails can flow uninterrupted. This is a Good Thing?

The problem is the daily email load that we have come to operate under: it doesn’t really matter how many messages a day you get. If you are away for a week or two, you can’t relax thinking about how many messages are piling up in your inbox, waiting for your perusal when you return.

You can read the entire essay here.