What if you had a way to find out how much of your life has been spent — let’s not say “wasted” — on email? There is. The Washington Post published a calculator byJSCalc.io that answers this scary question. Here’s what it looks like, and you can go try it yourself:

Image via tinypulse

How freaked out are you right now?

Adobe recently published a survey of Europeans’ addiction to email. While the focus of the study is on the way mobile devices are changing the nature of email, it’s also full of stats Americans will recognize, like how 79% of us check work email outside of the office and how 61% of us even continue to do so when we’re on vacation. Adobe created an infographic of the survey’s results.

Image via tinypulse

The only defense we have against all this is to incorporate some email “best practices” and hope our correspondents will follow suit. These suggestions from MindTools make sense:

1. Make good use of subject lines
2. Don’t overcommunicate by email
3. Keep messages clear and brief
4. Be polite
5. Check your tone
6. Proofread

The first three strike us as most important. Let your recipient know immediately what your email is about in the subject line. And by keeping your emails brief, you’ll make your recipient’s workload easier to bear and their inbox less terrifying. Think of the gratitude you may earn!

This article by Robby Berman originally appeared in TINYpulse.