How many emails is it reasonable to digest and respond to in a day?

How much information is enough?

In a posthumously published book (A Failure of Nerve, Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix) , Edwin Friedman maintains that we are near paralyzed with the volume of information we have coming at us day after day.  We don’t take action or take the risk involved with bold leadership because we feel that we have to somehow have all the information possible in order to decide wisely.  We are paralyzed by this information overload.  It stalls us physically, and even imaginatively. 

Medical intuitive Carolyn Myss maintains that the zinging through the air of the so-much information beamed through emails and wireless portals affects our beings at a cellular level.  We are bombarded; under seige.

At a training I was at yesterday the presenter maintained that stress (the common day lament of the masses) is not caused by doing too much.  It is caused by not doing the things that we should be doing.  When we knowingly set aside or try to ignore the things we know are ours to do, we become stressed.

Provocative.  So maybe what this means is that on this Friday night when I owe no one my presence I will relieve my stress by doing what I know I need to do.  I will stop.  I will stop inputting and outputting and allow a wide-open space  for my whipped-into-a-frenzy input-overloaded brain.

No emails.  No tasks.  No interactions.  No easy thing, this.