First AA, Then NA… Now Emailers Anonymous?

You've heard of AA and NA. How about EA?

An executive coach from Pennsylvania has created a 12-step program called Emailers Anonymous for clients who say an obsession with email is taking a toll on their productivity and all-around sanity.

Before we get carried away, Marsha Egan's program is not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous and she does not hold EA meetings for self-described email-aholics. But she has come up with 12 steps for people who believe email radically cuts into their productivity rather than contributes to it.

Number one on the list, as Reuters reports, is to "admit that e-mail is managing you. Let go of your need to check e-mail every 10 minutes." Egan tells Reuters that one of her clients could not walk by her computer, or anyone else's for that matter, without checking her email.

Think you need to hear some more steps? Answer these questions:

• Do you check email on your BlackBerry (or other smart phone) or on your computer periodically every few minutes.

• Do you check email to avoid doing other work?

• Do you look up at the clock to discover you've been reading and writing emails for the past hour, and none of them have anything to do with the work you need to get done today?

If you come close to saying yes to any of these, and I suspect we all do some days, then Egan's steps, taken as guidance or advice, can help all of us, even if we don't think we're addicted just quite yet.

Step 2: Commit to keeping your inbox empty.

Uh oh. I'd be in trouble there. But some of her other recommendations are common sense pointers we have heard before:

• Establish regular times to review email.

• Deal immediately with any email that can be handled in two minutes or less but create a file for emails that will take longer.

• Do not check email more than three or four times a day.

Egan points out that if email overindulgence is cutting into individual productivity, it has a cumulative effect on overall workplace productivity. She figures that employees, on average, take four minutes to read and deal with one email before they resume working productively.

Time to take stock: Are you an email addict, or just plain unproductive some days more than others?

Related on Yahoo! Tech:

Slogging Through Hundreds of Emails a Day?
Are You an Internet Addict?
Chicago Hotel Offers "BlackBerry Detox"