Fact · Dictation for work and study
0.2hours per week
In a 2005 time-motion study of 11 primary care physicians, reading mail or e-mail took an average of 0.04 hours a day, which is 0.2 hours a week at five workdays.
Quote found word for word on the live source, last checked October 19, 2026
In the source's own words
“Table 1. Continued Time Use Categories and Activities Hours Mean (SD) Percent of Total Workday ... Reading mail or e-mail 0.04 (0.05) 0.5”
Time Spent in Face-to-Face Patient Care and Work Outside the Examination Room, Andrew Gottschalk and Susan A. Flocke, The Annals of Family Medicine, 2005, Table 1, continued: Other work outside the examination room.
Open the original (DOI 10.1370/afm.404)- What it measures
- Observers recorded each physician's time on 21 randomly selected patient care days, in minutes, by activity. The table gives the mean per day across those days, outside the examination room.
- What it does not show
- The source reports hours a day, not a week. The weekly figure is the daily mean times five workdays, which the source does not state. Eleven physicians on 21 days from a few practices, so the figure is a rough average, not a national one.
In the data
A row of How Much Time People Spend Writing and Typing at Work, as Gottschalk et al. 2005, email: 0.2 hours per week.
- Activity
- Who
- Primary care physicians, observed at work
- How measured
- Time diary
- People
- 11
- Note
- The source gives 0.04 hours a day. 0.04 times 5 workdays is 0.2 hours a week; the source states no weekly figure.
Source
Used to calculate
- In the time spent writing, typing and on email dataset, the 7 published figures for “Email” have a median of 8.8 hours per week, ranging from 0.2 to 15.
- The time spent writing, typing and on email dataset holds 16 data points, each a published figure traced to its source.
- The time spent writing, typing and on email dataset draws on 9 distinct sources.