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Is Work Email Ruining Our Personal Time?

Spark News has really taken a lot from the Mashable infographic on how the internet is ruining our brain. We talked about it over the weekend, earlier today and again right now. It may be overkill, but the internet is starting to rule our lives. In fact, this new infographic from Mashable shows how our work email is not taking over our personal time. What’s more interesting is that for most people, this is AOK.

According to the graphic, 98 percent of the 543 business executives that were surveyed admitted to checking their email outside of work. In fact, 68 percent of these execs said that they check their email at least every one or two hours they are out of the office. These same executives do the same thing even when they are on vacation. Isn’t vacation a time away from work? That’s what I thought, but perhaps that is why I am not a business executive. The fact of the matter is, even when you are out of the office, business still carries on. You want to check up on your work or the status of a deal and make sure everything is still running smoothly. Only 3 percent of the business execs surveyed said they don’t check their email outside of work.

So, I’ll have to admit that this isn’t very shocking. Like I said, business must go on and it will no matter if you are in the office or not. However, I didn’t think that people really enjoyed constantly checking in with their work. Apparently, I am wrong once again. Most of these business execs stated that they enjoyed being able to check in while they were away. It gave them more of a sense of control. More specifically, 44 percent felt well-prepared because of it and 40 percent felt empowered. Empowered by email? Only 15 percent of these execs said that it was difficult for them to separate their work time from their personal time. Well, if these execs can have their cake and eat it too, well then more power to them! However, I wonder how some of their families feel when 53 percent of them step away from their dinner to deal with business matters.

What Mashable deduced from this graphic is that work is no longer a place, but rather a state of mind. These business execs might be fine with this, but how do you feel?

Do you check your email outside of work? Would you try to work while on vacation? Tell me about it.

SOURCE: Mashable, Gyro
IMAGE: Courtesy of Mashable, Gyro

Nicole Nicholson

Nicole is the Content Editor for Spark Hire and mainly writes for and edits the work for the Spark News blog. She graduated in 2010 with a BA in Journalism from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. She has a passion for writing, editing, and pretty much anything to do with content. In her free time she frequents the Chicago music scene and writes reviews on shows for her own personal blog. Connect with Nicole and Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter

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