What's happening: Checking email puts you—and your heart rate—on constant high alert, found US Army researchers working with informatics professor Gloria Mark, PhD, and her team at the University of California, Irvine.
What to try: Turns out everyone—including the Armed Services—knows how email can take over our lives: Mark says that by logging out of your office email account when you leave work, you'll be less stressed during the nightly hiatus and have more energy to dive into the fray the next morning. You know that a better way to work is to only check at scheduled times during the day, but consider having email delivered in batches, with the last batch of the day arriving 15 minutes before you leave work, and encourage coworkers to
call you if anything urgent comes up. Army representatives have said that they're eager for advice like this as increasing numbers of soldiers juggle smartphones and email on the battlefield; it can help you, too, be all that you can be (at work and at home).
