We're turning into a desk-bound nation. Cut down on the nonsense emails - we'll communicate better and perhaps exercise a bit more

A friend of mine has just started a new job in a government department. Previously she worked in the voluntary sector, and she's been a consultant working closely with the Civil Service, so you would assume she'd adjust quickly to the new culture. In fact, she's reeling from culture shock brought on by the volume of emails she's getting.

Most of them are actually meant for someone else and she has been copied in for reasons that are vague, or even meaningless. It's not unusual for an email to be cc'd to 40 different people. Maybe that means her department is a networked set-up where virtual teams are buzzing with so much energy that everyone simply has to be copied in for the matrix to work.

More likely there are just too many people trying to cover their backs the way they know best. Either way, these kinds of email are the exact opposite of the lean, high-performance working that gets you out of the door and back to your balanced life at 5:30pm, or whenever your paid work stops. Unless you get it under control, email is the enemy of work-life balance.

Sir Bob Geldof agrees. He has a stake in a number of successful companies, and his style is to stay away from them and let the people who are paid to manage get on with it. Except for emails. Geldof sees to it that all staff who work for his companies ignore incoming emails until 11.30 every day, at which point they are to send a response to the effect that emails will be dealt with strictly in the order that they are received - on the next working day.Geldof says emails "give a feeling of action, which is a mistake". His advice: "Don't do email."

In 2003, Phones4U founder John Caudwell tried to stem the flow of nonsense emails by banning the technology for internal communications. He said it could save up to three working hours a day per employee.

And two years ago, Sport England launched "Email Free Friday", to encourage employees to give up sending unnecessary internal emails for a day and walk over to speak to their colleagues instead. As we become more desk-bound as a nation, we are losing out on the small opportunities for exercise we once had at work, says Sport England. That's partly why heart disease and obesity are now on the increase.

Geldof was speaking at a conference on management earlier this month. Also speaking was American economics guru Lester Thurow, who told the mostly European audience that we have no chance of competing with the US unless we emulate his investment banker son.

He takes practically no holidays, is happy to work 60-hour weeks and sleeps with a Blackberry under his pillow so he can keep up to speed with his emails 24 hours a day. I think I'm with Sir Bob on this one.n

Steve Crabb is the editor of People Management