What technology has done is grease the skids. IT is just increasing the bandwidth and the speed of information. What we don't have is people trained to define the edges of their job and how to process information rapidly. Emergency scanning the e-mail and not making any decisions. As soon as the inbox gets to be more than a screenful, you need to file it, print it or delete it.
Most people keep looking at it and thinking about it and shuffling the stuff around.
People are doing a lot of thinking about what they ought to be thinking about and feeling bad. It's not so much time as it is mental distraction and stress. If it's in your head, it's in the wrong place. Second, don't just leave it there. Go back and ask yourself what you need to do about it.