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You should be checking emails every 10 minutes—we have a fiduciary duty to our clients.
Turn off notifications and check once or twice a day. I took my first vacation in November, and struggled with the same. But—as you might expect—the world kept turning and nothing urgent came up.
Rising Star
I feel seen. Nothing urgent came up. Guess I’ll just uninstall the app
Let my phone battery die and fail to recharge it. Works great.
If the company can’t survive a week without you then it’s not staffed correctly.
Throw your phone into the ocean or crush it aggressively with your hard-soled shoe
Rising Star
Funnily enough, whenever a client of ours sends a preservation notice in an internal investigation, invariably two or three people report their phones stolen/lost/destroyed on Monday
I check my email once each day, usually over breakfast Then, both my wife and I put our phones in a predetermined space and they sit there all day unless we need to take pictures or go on the internet to order dinner etc. The phones can only be removed with permission from both parties.
It’s not perfect but it usually works
I like this idea
I lock my phone away and check it once a day—when I wake up or before bed. Do not carry it around with you. It helps.
Chief
Leave your phone in the hotel. Check in the morning and evening. The fate of the free world doesn’t depend on you being available 24/7 on vacation.
You guys get vacations?
I disable my work email on my phone and check it once a day on my laptop after a couple of cocktails.
This.
Put up an OOO message and make it clear that you will be checking email infrequent and give a contact person in case of an emergency.
Plus make sure you have someone covering for you so your team doesn’t have to bother you.
If not you won’t have a real vacation and will be. Isn’t out by year end!!
Better yet go somewhere without cell service
Utilize the auto-reply “out of the office” email response and direct people to correspond with your paralegal if it’s urgent and needs to be immediately addressed. I struggled with this myself but what helped me was bringing my laptop with me to check emails while/only I sipped on coffee in the morning. Thereafter, I didn’t touch my email the rest of the day. It allowed me to be responsive with my emails, get easy billable hours on vacation, without feeling guilty for being on vacation, and actually spending the majority of my vacation ON vacation. Plus it definitely helped to cut down on dealing with e-mail overload when I got back.
I don't. It's on my personal phone and I check it. Don't be me. In the end, like the other comment said, the world won't end. If it's on your personal phone you could always disable it or disable notifications and manually login to check it once at night.
One of the reasons I keep two phones. It still didn’t help me with my incessant checking and worrying about what I’m missing, what needs to be done, etc. I am making a huge effort to stop that and put my work phone away somewhere only to check once/twice a day. This can take some time especially if you’re a type A person who takes immense pride in your work. At one point, I realized I was actually making myself crazy, did not enjoy vacations, and certain things happened where I realized that no matter how many “wins” I get, I am not really that respected or cared about as a person. I’ve been mostly in house my entire career, so I don’t have billable hours or clients (other than my company). So basically I realized my manager takes credit for my wins and then lashes out at me for perceived missteps. And he never is my champion because he is too focused on himself and his job security. After that realization, and the depression that followed, I took a completely different approach to work and am trying not to care so much. As others have said, if I left tomorrow, they would have to figure it out. I don’t need to do anyone favors and I deserve to enjoy my time off.
Set the tone before leaving - “I’ll be out of the office without work comms.”
Also, don’t take your work phone/laptop.
I either (1) put my work phone in a place where I can only check it once per day, or (2) go somewhere without cell service. In all fairness, I usually go with (2).
Put the phone in a drawer. Check at same time every day but only once in AM and once in PM. That is it.
If you’re that bored and have to check your email all the time, you need a better travel companion or do something more active. I go sailing- no cell service, plenty to do, and good shipmates.
This used to make me miserable. I was constantly anxious sitting at the beach with my kids. Not in the moment at all and led to serious burn out and depression. Once I realized that no matter how good I am at my job, they do not care about me and when it’s my time to go it’ll just be. For various reasons, including mostly WFH, I am sticking it out and doing my best. I am doing my best to not check emails when I’m with my kids (once/twice a day) and just know that worst case scenario I get let go.
Bear with me here: It’s the urge to respond to the emails that you should work on first. Once you realize that seeing an email /=/ needing to respond to it, then you can graduate to checking infrequently. You could also set your OOO to direct people to your secretary/assistant and give the assistant some instructions on calling you if anything truly urgent arises so that you have reassurance that not checking email won’t cause you to miss something huge that actually justifies hopping on the ol’ Lenovo.
Sole in-house counsel at a software company. Took a 2 week honeymoon, gave everyone a months notice and told them I would be unreachable most days. Checked my phone once a day before bed which being in Europe coincided with end of business day on east coast. Think I ended up with 3 or 4 emails the whole trip. Obviously not the norm, but realized after the first week that my sales team was both self sufficient and respectful and that outside a serious emergency they would manage fine without me.
Throw your phone and computer out the window. When you’re back from vacation, ask for replacements. Just tell IT you spilled coffee on them and they exploded. Firefighters had to trash it thereafter. Now you have a newer phone and new computer. Repeat for your next vacation.