How Many Emails Have I Sent?
A rough lifetime estimate of your career email output, and the hours spent producing it.
emails sent in your career so far
Six figures incoming. Your sent folder is practically a novel.
Ok, how much of my life goes on writing emails? Let's work it out. I send about 40 emails a day, and each one takes 3 minutes. Say I keep that up for 5 years.
40 emails a day feels normal. I work 50 weeks a year, 5 days a week, so that's 1,250 working days. 1,250 times 40 is 50,000 emails.
At 3 minutes each, that's 150,000 minutes, or 2,500 hours. In 40-hour weeks, that's just over 62 weeks.
So more than a full working year of my life has gone on writing emails.
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This tool estimates the total number of emails you have sent over your working career, based on how long you have been working and your average daily email volume.
It also estimates how many hours you have spent writing them. The average office worker sends around 40 emails per day. At three minutes each, that is two hours a day, every working day. Over a career, the numbers get interesting quickly.
How we work it out
We assume 250 working days per year (50 weeks at 5 days), multiply by your daily send rate for the total, then multiply total emails by your minutes-per-email estimate to get the time figure. All numbers are estimates based on averages.
Common mistakes
- Counting the ones you receive. This is for the emails you send.
- Using your busiest day as an average.
- Forgetting the minutes per email include thinking and rereading, not just typing.
Questions
What counts as sending an email?
Any email you composed and sent, including replies and forwards. Quick one-line replies pull the average down; detailed responses push it up. Adjust the minutes-per-email slider to match your style.
What is a typical emails-per-day figure?
Studies typically put average office worker send rates between 30 and 50 emails per day. Customer-facing and management roles often send more; technical or creative roles often send fewer.
How is the total worked out?
Years in work times 50 working weeks, times 5 days, times the emails you send each day. 5 years at 40 a day comes to 50,000.
Why 50 weeks and not 52?
It leaves a couple of weeks for holiday, when you are not sending emails. It is a rough figure, not an exact count.
How does it work out the hours?
It multiplies your total emails by the minutes you spend on each one, then divides by 60. The work-weeks figure divides those hours by 40.
Take a break from the inbox.