Whatever you do, don't email this article to anyone else in your office. You may be stealing precious moments out of their lives. That's if you believe a new survey which shows the average worker spends at least two hours of every working day dealing with email. Henley Management College, a business school in the U.K., discovered that when all that electronic letter writing and sorting is added up, it takes an astounding ten years of your life to deal with it. And three and a half of those are a complete waste of time, since 32 percent of all messages read and sent are either not relevant or simply deleted.

Email has become like peanuts - it seems no one can eat just one. The study found one email generates as many as six more in response, taking up even more of your increasingly squeezed work time. The authors suggest that the letters result in more confusion, because it's not always clear what the sender means. And with BlackBerrys and other wireless devices, more people waste even more time checking their work mail from outside the office.

"Our research proves that email use is out of control, often causing confusion and inertia," outlines the College's Peter Thomson. "It also paints a bleak picture of silent offices where colleagues email rather than talk face to face."

All that costs time, money and efficiency. So what's the answer? Pick up a phone. The College found that a simple call to a colleague can staunch that excessive email flow and actually make your day more efficient, as well as spur better social relations between workers. Yet employees seem to prefer to lay out the most complicated matters to each other using their computers instead of their voices. And that's not only life changing - it may be life sapping as well.

Here are their six ways to manage your email overflow at work.

-Block out time during the day to tackle your email rather than dealing with each incoming message at once.

-Decide if a phone call wouldn't better resolve whatever the subject is.

-Turn off your auto alert. You don't always have to know the second a new letter arrives.

-Don't get in the habit of replying immediately. It could set a pattern you'll come to regret.

-Don't copy everyone on all your email replies. They may not need to hear what you have to say.

-Don't forward jokes, cartoons or anything else. They clog up the system and waste a lot of time. If you want to send something along, get your colleague's personal email address at home and direct it there.

Photo credit: Getty Images/Peter Parks

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