I'm probably just wierd
I love my job. I feel very lucky to do a job which I really enjoy, however this does mean that switching off is very hard. So even while I am on holiday I still want to know what the rest of the team are up to and how things are progressing. Over the last few years I have tailored my behaviour to try and get as much rest as possible while still staying 'in touch'. I have been through both 'complete detachment' and 'office holiday' phases and think I have found a nice middle ground.
Complete Detachment
This is what a lot of my friends and colleagues seem to be able to achieve and in some ways I really envy their ability to disengage completely from the office and just enjoy their time away. No work email, no phone calls, just friends, family and fun. I did try this and the worst part was getting back to the office to an email inbox that was incomprehensibly full. I like to keep a clear inbox most of the time and the sheer amount of (spam/outdated/irrelevant) emails surrounding the few interesting email would worry me even while I was away on holiday. Trying to be completely detached made me nervous and I would try to steal time away to secretly check my email, a bit like a child secretly eating a smuggled chocolate bar
Office Holiday
This is the complete opposite. Mobile phone pinging each time a new email comes through. Calling colleagues to get updates. Although I felt that I was still in touch with the team this did nothing for my family life. My wife felt that she wasn't on holiday with me at all and was (quite rightly upset with me). The upside was that there was no deluge of email to wade through on my way back to the office. I needed to break this behaviour but not go back to the nervous ticks of complete detachment.
Once a day email triage
This is where I currently am. Once a day (usually in the evening but sometimes early in the morning) I will spend 1-2 hours working, however I have STRICT rules:
- No work related instant messaging
- Only urgent coding or technical 'fixes'. URGENT is only stuff that cannot be delegated and is holding up people if it isn't completed.
- Answer only the simple emails, if something needs deeper discussion or thought and it can wait then leave it in the inbox to deal with when you return
3 comments:
Leave work at work. If no one covers for you your employer needs to arrsnge cover. If they dont then your work isnt urgent.
Always remember, you're just a number to your employer so don't give them your life.
I'm on vacation until Monday (now Wednesday evening). I want to achieve complete detachment, but I know that won't be the case.
I know that I'll end up checking e-mails before I'm back in the office, but this will be a spam purge, and I am highly unlikely to respond. My likelihood of responding varies over time, and is mostly dependent on how much I'm feeling embittered by my employer at a given moment.
I'm sort of at an advantage in that I made a stand by making the conscious decision not to opt-in to the work e-mail on my personal phone scheme. To check work e-mails, I have to haul out the laptop and spark AT&T dialer into life. That cuts out a great deal of temptation.
Like you, I love my job. Well, I don't really. I love working with great technology and exploring what's possible through your own brain power alone. (You remember, that line we were spun as graduates?) That's not my day job, however.
Personal circumstances mean that I have a great deal of spare time on my hands in the evening. During this spare time you'll often find me on the works laptop playing with the interesting stuff that the time constraints of the day job doesn't permit. I'm happy with that situation: yes, it's stuff vaguely related to what I'm doing in the office, but that's irrelevant. It's still a hobby.
Net result is that over the next four days, I'll be spending quite a lot of time prodding around, tinkering with something where the initial idea is work-related. If it makes my working day better: result! If I get extra credit for the effort: double bonus! Regardless, it's something interesting that I want to do.
Answering e-mail on vacation though? Not this weekend. 'Nuff said.
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