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Vacations and work emails (1 Viewer)

ragincajun

ragincajun

Footballguy
Sitting poolside on vacation at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, TX.  The heat index is 104.  It is a beautiful day but the emails will not stop so here I am sitting in a longe chair sweating my butt off instead of in the lazy river with my family.

Does anyone ever truly relax on vacation?  I average about 120 emails a day.  If I let it ride for a week that is a whole lot to come back too.  I don’t really have a backup.  I have staff I can delegate things too however there are things only I can handle.  I mentioned this to my boss and he said he brings his laptop on vacation also so…

 
I usually take mine with me, but never fire it up during work hours.  If I'm away for a week, I'll open up e-mail during the evening and clear out the inbox while I relax with a drink or 3.

I'm not passing up a fun activity unless something is seriously on fire.

 
i'm going on vacation next week and really need to decompress and unplug, so I will try tp ignore e-mails as much as possible..

 
I answer no phone calls and answer no emails on vacation. My co-workers know this and the courtesy is extended to everyone here when they leave. We just have a system in place where everyone can handle each other's job when we are gone.   

 
Gally said:
Work will be there when you get back.  Vacation is to unplug.  Don't keep checking in on work.  Get something out of your vacation.  
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Agree.

I should amend my response to say that 90% of the emails that hit my inbox I can just file or delete without having to do anything.  My goal in spending a little time during the week is to get those deleted/filed so that when I get back to work for real, I only have to see the ones that actually require my attention.

 
I used to just have one phone, which was connected to my work e-mails.  Hard to relax because I had my phone on me, and was seeing the e-mails and messages come through, and feeling the buzzes.

I've found vacations a lot more relaxing since I got a second phone. I take my personal phone with me, and leave work phone in the hotel room. I'll then just check it out at night to see if anything important came in.  I get a lot of e-mails too, but easier to bang out at once at night instead of getting the constant buzzes throughout the day.

 
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ragincajun said:
Sitting poolside on vacation at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, TX.  The heat index is 104.  It is a beautiful day but the emails will not stop so here I am sitting in a longe chair sweating my butt off instead of in the lazy river with my family.

Does anyone ever truly relax on vacation?  I average about 120 emails a day.  If I let it ride for a week that is a whole lot to come back too.  I don’t really have a backup.  I have staff I can delegate things too however there are things only I can handle.  I mentioned this to my boss and he said he brings his laptop on vacation also so…
Click to expand...
I try to do anything work related at night or morning when nothing much is going on, but recently I’ve just unplugged more and more.  I’m not ready to retire for a while, but definitely don’t care with both of us working and in the best financial position we’ve ever been. If my work has a problem with me being on vacation then let me go and I’ll find another job. I’ve been there long enough to have a nice severance so it would be a nice break!

 
Only time I’ve truly unplugged during the last 10 years or so was my COVID induced furlough last year. Best week I’ve had in years. 

 
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heckmanm said:
Agree.

I should amend my response to say that 90% of the emails that hit my inbox I can just file or delete without having to do anything.  My goal in spending a little time during the week is to get those deleted/filed so that when I get back to work for real, I only have to see the ones that actually require my attention.
Click to expand...


I get it but it will be just as easy (and kind of a nice low stress return) to leave those to do once you get back.  Vacation is just that.  Let work go and get back to it when you get back to work.  It will make the vacation so much better.

 
I refuse to worry about work on vacation. I work in IT Security and there are certain alerts that will come to my cell if they are high enough but other then that I trust the other staff to handle it. Being a financial institution we require all employees to be away 5 consecutive days with no access as a fraud prevention tool. I did my 5 days earlier this year but will be away next week as well. I will have my laptop in the event of an emergency but other then that don't bug me, I work so I can enjoy this time with my family.

 
I create a coverage plan where any meetings or project areas are covered by someone, they are informed of course.  Then I don't look at work email until I get back.  If I get a text or a direct message via Slack or something I will generally respond to those, but unless it is a dire emergency it is just to respond that I'm OOO and will return on X date.

 
heckmanm said:
I usually take mine with me, but never fire it up during work hours.  If I'm away for a week, I'll open up e-mail during the evening and clear out the inbox while I relax with a drink or 3.

I'm not passing up a fun activity unless something is seriously on fire.
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This.

 
I always let everyone know when I will be gone.   I turn off my work email app on my phone that has an instant response message of when i will be back.  In case of a total emergency they have my phone number.  Then I turn my work email back on my first day back.  Or if we are driving home 3-4 hours I will open it on way home and let my wife drive.  After 2 days of no work talk I finally relax for the rest of the week or two.

 
Gally said:
I get it but it will be just as easy (and kind of a nice low stress return) to leave those to do once you get back.  Vacation is just that.  Let work go and get back to it when you get back to work.  It will make the vacation so much better.
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To each his own. I have less stress during vacation knowing I won't have 2,000+ mostly unimportant e-mails clogging my inbox when I get back.

And the more I have to plow through that first morning back, the more likely it is that I'll accidentally select something important as I'm trying to mass-file or mass-delete the junk. Especially since MS Outlook will sometimes go "oh, you're selecting a bunch of e-mails all at once? I'll just assume you really want to select EVERYTHING IN THE INBOX and do that for you".

 
I have a hard time unplugging. My wife and I took a cruise a couple years ago to Northern Europe for two weeks. The thought of coming back to two weeks worth of e-mails just freaked me out. I told my wife I needed 30 minutes each morning to check my e-mails. It worked out great. I would get up, fire up the computer, zip through my e-mails, answer the important stuff, then shut down for the day.

I know a lot of people think I'm nuts (she does too), but I had a much better time all day knowing the big stuff was handled. 

 
ragincajun said:
Sitting poolside on vacation at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, TX.  The heat index is 104.  It is a beautiful day but the emails will not stop so here I am sitting in a longe chair sweating my butt off instead of in the lazy river with my family.

Does anyone ever truly relax on vacation?  I average about 120 emails a day.  If I let it ride for a week that is a whole lot to come back too.  I don’t really have a backup.  I have staff I can delegate things too however there are things only I can handle.  I mentioned this to my boss and he said he brings his laptop on vacation also so…
Click to expand...


Not sure how old you are but I'm 47.  In my 20's and 30's I would stay on top of emails while on vacation.  It's took me a long time to realize that for 95% of jobs out there - especially white collar where you would even be checking email - the work will always be there.  Turn your laptop off, ignore your email and enjoy time with your family.  It's cliche to say but I guarantee you won't be sitting on your death bed wishing you had one more day to check email but you will wish for more time with your family.

 
I also have a hard time fully unplugging and will often check email at night just to clear up my inbox to save time upon my return.

The truth is though that I think many of us have an inflated sense of importance that they can't unplug. Although that might be more so if you work for a bigger company - I can see a difference if you are a small business owner and don't have the staff support to fully check out.

 
One thing that helped me years ago was a colleague told me to turn off all the notifications on my phone. I'm one of those guys that if I see the number pop up on any of my apps I have to check it. That includes emails, text messages, app updates, settings...whatever.

So I just turned off all notifications that pertained to my job. Emails and texts. Changed my life. I could then go check them when I was ready to and handle it all at once instead of checking it 100 times a day.

 
I will sometimes skim work emails if I'm on vacation, mostly to clear out some of the junk so that I have less to deal with when I get back. But the one thing I will pretty much never do is respond, because I never want to train coworkers or anyone else to expect a response from me. On my most recent vacation I saw an email from someone who was going to be coming through town while I was away and wanted to meet with me or someone else at my organization. If the meeting had been important, I might have been tempted to break my rule and forward the email to my colleague (with a caveat like, "Briefly emerging from vacation to forward this to you. Now back to the lake!") But in truth I find the person kind of annoying, plus there likely wasn't much we could do for them, so I didn't respond until I got back. I had set an out-of-office message so it wasn't like they thought I was ghosting them.

 
kutta said:
I have a hard time unplugging. My wife and I took a cruise a couple years ago to Northern Europe for two weeks. The thought of coming back to two weeks worth of e-mails just freaked me out. I told my wife I needed 30 minutes each morning to check my e-mails. It worked out great. I would get up, fire up the computer, zip through my e-mails, answer the important stuff, then shut down for the day.

I know a lot of people think I'm nuts (she does too), but I had a much better time all day knowing the big stuff was handled. 
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That's the way to do it. I have never been one to stress over a whole lot of anything when it comes to work despite being in an executive position for a long time. My industry is as far from brain surgery as you're going to get so missing an e-mail response isn't going to kill anyone. The anxiety of a two week e-mail pile on return is not worth the loss of 30 minutes a day to review and respond to the highest of priority items. YMMV but that's what works for me. And kutta apparently. 

 
I set my out of office and indicate I won’t be accessing email. I then delete the app off my phone prior to vacation and reinstall when I get back.  Anyone that had a critical need, I tell them to call me. 

 
Every boss I've had at my company (5 so far in 15 years) has told me to completely disengage during time off.  I appreciate it.  In my auto reply, I list people who can cover for me on different topics.  It seems to work well.  Good company.

 
Tick said:
Every boss I've had at my company (5 so far in 15 years) has told me to completely disengage during time off.  I appreciate it.  In my auto reply, I list people who can cover for me on different topics.  It seems to work well.  Good company.
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I am the boss and I tell my employees that too. I want them to disengage. But I don’t completely disengage.

 
Vacation started yesterday. I put my boss as the contact in my out of office message for anything that comes in. I blocked email notifications and removed the app from my home screen. 

Work to live, don't live to work. I'm living now. I'll work later.

 
I check in periodically but it’s mostly skimming.  Will respond if something is important enough.  I don’t stress about it,   If anything it gives me some piece of mind knowing how everything is going.  If something looks like it’s going downhill I know to contact someone who can cover

Edit:  adding this is when I take a true vacation (out of town, etc).  If I am just taking the day off to relax or because I have a home project to do later in the day I have a much worse habit of opening the laptop and working or taking conference calls.  I used to joke that taking a vacation day like that just meant you were working from home

 
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I wish I could disengage from work on vacation.  Unfortunately I have an employer that thinks its okay to call/email/text employees at any given time and expects to hear back relatively immediately.  Frankly—i hate it and I don’t think it’s fair to the staff.  We work in a retail environment—we’re not doctors where we are paid to be constantly on call.   

 
I call vacation "working from someplace nicer".  But it's what I signed-up for when I took the gig.  

Only at xmas do I really get vacation.  Because so much of the office shuts down (everyone else on vacation) that the email traffic drops to almost zero.

ETA the best vacation/work call I took was Thanksgiving Day.  I was in a time zone behind the office, so it was 0730, and I'm at the top of a mountain for a trail run, and it's probably 20F and pitch black (headlamp to see).  My face is frozen, and I get an urgent work call.  Trying to share my proposed course of action with a frozen face made me sound drunk.  Had to explain to my colleague later what was going on -- and I wasn't really getting that early of a start on TG celebrations...

 
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AAABatteries said:
Not sure how old you are but I'm 47.  In my 20's and 30's I would stay on top of emails while on vacation.  It's took me a long time to realize that for 95% of jobs out there - especially white collar where you would even be checking email - the work will always be there.  Turn your laptop off, ignore your email and enjoy time with your family.  It's cliche to say but I guarantee you won't be sitting on your death bed wishing you had one more day to check email but you will wish for more time with your family.
Click to expand...
44.  I hear you.  Had a great time at the Rangers game tonight and didn’t think about work one time.

 
I was on vacation this week and unplugged 99.9% of the time.  The only thing I did was check email at night if there was nothing going on. I didn’t respond to anything, just cleaning it out.  
 

I was probably a decade into my career before I realized I had to unplug or I was going to completely burn myself out.  Now everyone knows I won’t be checking email. If there is a true emergency they can call my cell phone. I bury my email app on a back page on my phone.  No notifications, etc.  It has worked great for me. 

 
Early in my career, I used to stay on top of my email all the time on vacation.  One year I went camping in Yellowstone - no internet access for a full week.  Guess what - my projects didn't blow up.  Work continued without me and I learned to trust my team.

I haven't checked in since.

 
I bring my work laptop on vacation, but I usually don't go into email. I tell my team to text me if there's something that can't wait until I come back. My OOO message tells people to contact my boss if they need something addressed while I'm gone. Usually takes about half a day to go through email my first day back, which I'm fine with. 

 
ragincajun said:
Sitting poolside on vacation at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, TX.  The heat index is 104.  It is a beautiful day but the emails will not stop so here I am sitting in a longe chair sweating my butt off instead of in the lazy river with my family.

Does anyone ever truly relax on vacation?  I average about 120 emails a day.  If I let it ride for a week that is a whole lot to come back too.  I don’t really have a backup.  I have staff I can delegate things too however there are things only I can handle.  I mentioned this to my boss and he said he brings his laptop on vacation also so…
Click to expand...
in my company, we call this PTO approach  "pretend time off"

count me as another one in this thread that has disabled all of my email notifications (sounds/banners etc).....and that's whether i'm vacation mode or regular life mode. 

 
I am fortunate. My manager covers for our team.  I still bring the computer and follow my emails, but am able to wait on them a little.... to give my manager an opportunity to get to them.

he just went on a little vacation and I covered him.  He was tremendously grateful, as am I when I leave.

 
Totally off point , but a few weeks ago, one of my long term co-workers quit pretty abruptly. She set her out of office to say "I will be out of the office forever." before she left. 

Just loved it....

 
ragincajun said:
Sitting poolside on vacation at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, TX.  The heat index is 104.  It is a beautiful day but the emails will not stop so here I am sitting in a longe chair sweating my butt off instead of in the lazy river with my family.

Does anyone ever truly relax on vacation?  I average about 120 emails a day.  If I let it ride for a week that is a whole lot to come back too.  I don’t really have a backup.  I have staff I can delegate things too however there are things only I can handle.  I mentioned this to my boss and he said he brings his laptop on vacation also so…
Click to expand...


I didn't use to, but in my current job I turn on the auto reply, direct people to a designated backup in the office and nothing can't wait until I get back. 

There's nothing I do that if properly planned can't wait or be handled by someone else if urgent.

 
Nemesis said:
in my company, we call this PTO approach  "pretend time off"

count me as another one in this thread that has disabled all of my email notifications (sounds/banners etc).....and that's whether i'm vacation mode or regular life mode. 
Click to expand...
👍 One nice thing about having a work computer which I turn off when done and not having work email on my phone. I can't check it without talking ten minutes to turn the computer back on and logging into the VPN.

Also nice thing about retiring once already, it's been confirmed that my butt gets replaced quickly after I leave. I don't get replaced as quickly with my family.

 
jvdesigns2002 said:
I wish I could disengage from work on vacation.  Unfortunately I have an employer that thinks its okay to call/email/text employees at any given time and expects to hear back relatively immediately.  Frankly—i hate it and I don’t think it’s fair to the staff.  We work in a retail environment—we’re not doctors where we are paid to be constantly on call.   
Click to expand...
Retail is the worst. A buddy of mine managed a Toys r Us (left a few years before their demise) and I was amazed at the personal access they demanded. We would be out in the middle of the bay fishing on his day off: ten calls  in three hours. We would be in line for Splash Mountain in Disney: four calls. Playing poker at night: five calls.

There was a time when his mother was dying in the hospital and his phone turned off because he wasn't paying attention to if it was charged or not and, when he realized it and plugged his phone in, he had 20+ missed calls. They actually wrote him up for. He quit two weeks later.

 
ragincajun said:
Sitting poolside on vacation at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, TX.  The heat index is 104.  It is a beautiful day but the emails will not stop so here I am sitting in a longe chair sweating my butt off instead of in the lazy river with my family.

Does anyone ever truly relax on vacation?  I average about 120 emails a day.  If I let it ride for a week that is a whole lot to come back too.  I don’t really have a backup.  I have staff I can delegate things too however there are things only I can handle.  I mentioned this to my boss and he said he brings his laptop on vacation also so…
Click to expand...
I just got back from 8 days straight days off.  Never checked any work stuff once.   Felt great.

 
-OZ- said:
👍 One nice thing about having a work computer which I turn off when done and not having work email on my phone. I can't check it without talking ten minutes to turn the computer back on and logging into the VPN.

Also nice thing about retiring once already, it's been confirmed that my butt gets replaced quickly after I leave. I don't get replaced as quickly with my family.
Click to expand...
I no longer even take my laptop on all my trips - makes it easy to ignore when you don’t have access to it.  

 
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