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It seems it is, at least according to Cal Newport in his recent New Yorker article, titled appropriately enough, "Email is Making Us Miserable" (read with free account). The author summarizes recent research into how our always-on relationship with work causes various types of stress, even when, or maybe especially when, we're not actively on the clock. And with the additional blurring of work and home, COVID has likely increased this stress for many workers.
Helpfully, Newport doesn't leave us with just the research evidence of what all this email is doing to us, but he offers some suggestions on how to reduce the stress. Basic project management and task tracking tools, like Request Tracker (RT), can help by clarifying who is responsible for a given task. RT's seamless integration with email can make it a good option if you are trying to gradually convert to some sort of task management, since most users can continue to send and reply to email as they are used to, but it starts getting tracked on task tickets.
RT offers other basic project management features like tracking Priority on tasks and dates like Due to help clearly communicate which tasks are most important and when they need to be completed. And just being able to set and check a ticket's status can cut out some of those "where are we with this?" emails.
Having email go to a group can also help ease the feeling that every email in your inbox is something you are responsible for. Having a group of users set as "watchers" on a queue is a common configuration for RT for just this reason. A support queue, watched by several co-workers, distributes the load across many people. Whoever is available at a given time takes the next ticket when they are actively looking at the support dashboard.
RT does send email based on updates on tickets, and long-time RT users might argue it can send a lot of email. We won't deny that, but we have found that the email that clearly comes from from RT, based on the Subject and From lines, doesn't provoke that same stress as an email sent personally to you. You know the task and conversation is on a ticket and can be dealt with during work hours when you have time. It also eases the reliance on using your inbox as to-do list, since all of the important information is stored in RT.
When you need a break from email, maybe for vacation or just because you don't need to be notified about every update when it happens, you can use RT's email digest. In your user preferences, you'll find an option called "Email delivery" which offers a daily and weekly option. If you pick one, you'll get a single email with all of the updates sent to your account. And if you just want the email to stop, like the Thrive Away tool mentioned in the article, you can suspend your email completely.
To manage the email you do want to get, RT’s notification settings can be controlled and adjusted at many different levels. As you complete projects and start new ones over time, it's good to periodically review how recipients get added to queues and tickets, and update when appropriate. For example, some queues many not need everyone to be a watcher. And maybe not all users need an email notification when they are assigned a new ticket, they'll see it when they log into RT next.
As many companies are still adapting to remote work and some start thinking about returning to the office, it's worth spending some time looking at how you're tracking work. As an all-remote company, we shared some of our process previously. If you're already using RT, schedule a little bit of time to think about how you might update your configuration to make things easier. If you're not using some sort of task management software, RT is a flexible ticketing tool that will grow with you even if you start small.