to keep separate email accounts for her various roles because rapidly shifting contexts is stressful. Prefers a different “setting” for each life domain. Using different email clients for each account provides the feeling of a different environment. Once you read an email it “changes your status” (i.e. you must respond to new information). This is a source of stress (not the email itself.) “I look at every email, even if it’s marked junk, because I don’t trust filters!” “Sometimes editing in a Word doc feels safer in a way than editing in the email client.” “My job is to produce code, not answer emails!” “I don’t want to see things [in my inbox] other than direct requests for action.” Has hundreds of labels and filters. Only looks at unread filtered messages when bored. A software engineer needs to minimize distractions because her work requires extreme focus A department admin, for whom most emails require a response, needs to know that no important message goes unnoticed, because this makes her feel at ease.
takes time and effort... ...and you can only be in one place (or context) at a time. Trying to be in two places at once, is not only impossible, it’s stressful! This “model” of sorts, is not based on any real science, other than the general idea that spatial metaphors strongly affect our language and thus our cognition (cf Lakoff & Johnson). It is really just a late night idea that came to me after processing my interviews and thinking about how reading emails often demands rapidly changing contexts.
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