I get so many emails on Sunday night from people trying to get ahead for the week. There’s no expectation to respond but I still feel a little obligated to read and start acting on them. How do you stay unplugged and let it go until Monday?

I found that it really helps to get my work email off of my personal phone. I don't feel so pressured to respond when I don't see them and actively have to seek out my emails in order to stress about not responding to them, lol.

2hrs of checking email every Sunday night = 104hrs per year you spend working for free. Stop that. Give that time to you and your fam.

Emails are a Monday morning problem. If it’s that urgent the important people have my cell number

Does no one know how to schedule send emails? I would highly encourage this. Then people can send on their own time but they don’t go out until regular working hours.

Turn off your email notifications during the weekend. There is no reason you should be fielding emails on Sunday evenings!

I mean you literally wrote “there’s no expectation to respond” why are you worrying about it?

I’m slammed during the week and my nights and weekends are packed with kids practices and games, events, family things, etc. Sunday night after 8-9 PM is literally my only time it’s quiet and yes, I’m sending emails and I don’t care if you read it now or tomorrow or in three days, I just need to keep it moving.

Don’t respond till Monday

Best thing I ever did for my mental well being was to get work emails and teams off my personal cellphone. Unless I’m the CEO making the most critical decisions for the organization, you can wait for my response on the next business day. If it’s really a do or die situation then call my manager and have them contact me on my cell.

Are they paying you extra to open your laptop on Sunday? Simple as that…

If you feel obligated to answer emails over the weekend, then your problem is you and your lack of self control and boundary setting. Same goes for working outside businesses hours, if you do it, you are only just setting yourself up for failure.

After 41 years of being on the work treadmill and seeing my father have a near fatal heart attack from corporate stress, one person collapsing in their office with high blood pressure, another suicide due to corporate bullying and I myself losing time through stress, I can honestly say it’s not worth merging personal and work times, and thus living-to-work. No matter what dreams you have of realising a great project, it rarely happens as those with authority “above” you seldom have the intellect to grasp the bigger picture of addressing and solving a fundamental problem, rather they just try and climb a meaningless ladder. So it’s better to keep weekends for home life as a detox for the week ahead, else there’s no time to decompress and when that time comes, and it will, of hating Mondays because of a toxic workplace, you’ll have no way of dealing with it. So work-to -live, it’s pointless being the richest person in the graveyard, or more frequently helping to make someone else become the richest person in the graveyard (buried with four Ferraris no less). Enjoy this life as you owe nothing to your current employer or “team” and remember no-one gets out of here alive.

I get things done over the weekend sometime since I’m not a morning person and I don’t want it hanging over my head to get it sent off early Monday. I don’t expect anyone to look at it or respond, I’m just managing my time in a way that works for me.

Turn off the notifications on phone, if you have them on. Avoid checking your laptop over the weekend!

I send emails on weekends to get a headstart too, but I always use delivery delay so that it arrives bright and early on Monday morning

So nobody cares whether you write Sunday night or Monday morning. And some partners have told me they actually get pissed off if someone emails them over the weekend :)

Just unplug. You go to work on Monday and start reading. There is no need to do work that you're not being paid for.

I also like to remember this:

An old timer was visiting on the porch with a friend When his house phone started ringing.

Well he just sat and rocked away.

His friend turned to him and said, “Isn’t that your phone?”

He answered, “Yep” and kept rocking.

Friend said, “ aren’t you going to answer it?”

“nope”

Friend - “why not?”

Old timer - “had the durn thing put in for MY convenience”

You own your device. Don’t let it own you.

Send later/schedule send for those who have an excuse to work off hours.
OP, like everyone else said, don't check emails on off hours unless you're a top decision maker and even then, EA's will/should let you know if there's anything that needs immediate attention right?

Leaders have told me that it's a bad reflection on either your own poor time management and/or the manager not addressing issues with workload. Managers who do it to the people they manage, are inconsiderate of others' time and stressing out their team. I took these tidbits with a grain of salt, it's true but there's always exceptions. Good luck!

By staying UNPLUGGED from Friday evening until Monday morning. Don't access your account over the weekend .. let them e-mail or text anyone they want, but that doesn't mean you need to read them until Monday. I did this for 3 years with a hyper team and they survived just fine. The Earth will still keep spinning.

the first thing is to assess whether there’s a valid reason emails are coming on your Sunday night.

Got colleagues in Asia? They‘re at work.

Did you ask for an update before Monday AM meeting? Person worked the weekend. Seems good.

Are people finishing off stuff that was due or getting a jump on what’s coming due? There’s a good reason and a bad reason: good reason - don’t want anyone waiting on me for something I agreed to do; Bad reason - I know someone is going to ask status at Monday AM meeting & I want say I did something or I’m waiting on someone. ( This works better if the other person is not in the same meeting! ;). )

it may help to visualize your phone like an old fashioned inbox. if you walked into your office on Monday morning and just as you sat down a whole stack of mail was delivered - what would you do?

A. Look at it to see if anything is urgent or important
B. evaluate looking at your mail versus any required tasks
C. Replan your day based on what was your existing priorities versus what they are now. 95% of the time nothing actually changes.

Depending on the personality of the people with whom you work - watch out for people that always use ‘read receipts’.

That’s a nice feature for important stuff. Yes I know people saw it.

However it‘s also a gotcha for office politics. I know Tom read the email at 8:30 and nothings been done yet.