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According to a Harris Interactive (News - Alert) poll reported in USAToday, 50 is "the breaking point for employees' daily allowance of e-mail. Anything more sets their heads spinning, based on the results of more than 2,000 American adults in early June."

Harris found that one in five people say "50 work-related e-mail messages per day is the magic number before they feel swamped. The effect is even more pronounced for smartphone users - 37 percent feel 'overwhelmed' by 50 or more work e-mail, says Jonathan McCormick, chief operating officer of Intermedia (News - Alert), a Web-based e-mail provider of services including Hosted Exchange, that sponsored the survey."

Evidently small-business users want to stay that way: Fully 94 percent of small-business employees said 50 e-mails is their limit, USAToday reported. That means only six percent of small business employees have learned how to answer five e-mails, play Bejeweled, answer five more, drink coffee, answer five more, make a couple work-related calls, answer five more and work for twenty minutes.

Sadly enough we're all pitiful at this: "Gender makes no difference," the study found, noting "men and women are equally stressed - 94 percent of men and 95 percent of women cited the number 50."

USAToday says that Intermedia advises e-mail users to "organize and prioritize their digital correspondence, and read and respond to incoming messages that require quick responses."