Ted's Take

Today’s flood of e-mail can make a person feel like Sisyphus, the character from Greek mythology who was condemned to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a hill, and whenever he reached the top, the boulder would back to the bottom of the hill, forcing him to start all over.  Most mornings I get up at about 5:30 in the morning.  I hang out with my wife for a while and then I do my e-mail for about an hour.  If I checked e-mail before bed, I usually have about 30 Caps-related and 50 AOL-related e-mails by the time I check it in the morning.  I check my e-mail again before I leave the house around 9, and by then, I usually have another 50 e-mails.  As soon as I get to the office, I try to attack that new stack of e-mail, and then I spend at least another hour in the middle of the day cutting down the incoming flood.  Overall, I usually get about 350 AOL-related e-mails each day, so on average, I get about one work mail every four minutes around the clock, and that doesn’t include100+ hockey e-mails and personal mails I get each day.  It sometimes feels like daily life is becoming a constant search for "white space" — that free time that allows you to clear your head, reflect on your priorities, and refocus your energies.  As much as I love — and need — e-mail, it truly is the enemy of an open calendar.