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Rising Star
I always liked to sit down with team members or managers and find out if any priorities have shifted while on PTO before tackling emails and notifications. Otherwise, I liked to work backwards from most recent to older stuff. As the saying goes, the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.
Pro
Ignore it all, if it is important people will bring it up again.
Send out an email to your team the night before you return. Ask that your team inform you of any emails that they handled in your absence, by sending an email informing you that it has been ;handless. Block your schedule with a 3 hour meeting in your calendar for the first day back in office to sort through mail. Review the emails from newest back. This should keep issues grouped by tue subject line, allowing you to detect what has been handled by others and what needs to be done.
This is exactly why I get ridiculously granular with Outlook folder/sub-folders/n-sub-folders and rules to auto-sort emails.
Ideally, you or your manager had a designee to handle things while you were out of office and you had informed staff two to four weeks prior to your departure of your absence and engaged your "Out of Office" messaginging for both email and phone. Therefore only the most recent messaging may be urgent. All others can be exercises in use of the delete key, since they are likely already handled by your fill in. Or upon return you can meet with those covering for you discover any issues that arise in your absence that we're not addressed. The bottom line is that if your absence was properly communicated, there should be no expectation of an immediate response to any old email upon your return. Also, if this issue is ingoing when you vacation, have a chat with your manager to determine what additional steps the recommend to assuage feeling overwhelmed. You owe it to yourself and your coworkers to take the time.
At that point and in this economy, that's job security.
Well my teammates and I cover each other's emails and urgent issues when someone is out of the office. We are very good at my job about helping one another out. I think that is vital to have people on your team that will let you enjoy your time off and not have to worry about being slammed when you get back in the office. I definitely have more catch up to do when I am back after time off, but it is not nearly as bad since I know my team will help me out and vice versa.
I can honestly say that where I work now is a much more collaborative team than anywhere else I have worked.
Chief
I check my email while I'm away to delete the crap and forward/delegate those things that I can. I just had a week's vacation and did that every day and returned to only 70 emails.
Declare email and slack bankruptcy when you come back. Say a polite version of “if you sent me something during my PTO I am not responding to that”
I totally get how overwhelming those notifications can be. One thing that helps me is to tackle them in chunks—maybe set aside some time each day to go through a few at a time instead of trying to clear them all at once. Also, don’t hesitate to prioritise the most important ones first and let your team know you're catching up.
M
Take the day after vacation off, but use it to go through email.
Seriously- do they give you things for free- nope- the more we all give away for free- the more likely they are to staff inappropriately and not budget.
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Rising Star
“Mark all as read”
Too late now, but suggest *not* signing in to work email/Slack when you still are on vacation. Now work is what you are thinking about unfortunately. I like the idea to book the Monday morning to go through and catch up. For myself, I used to do this Sunday night, but that was my preference even though I should have done it *at work* and gotten paid for it.