I was at a conference today and we were discussing this.  The topic of the specific question was “dealing with burnout.”

There’s lots of helpful suggestions here around muting phone notifications etc.  Here’s a radical suggestion: switch it off.  Realistically, who’s actually likely to call you for personal reasons when you’re in the middle of an oil change?

As far as work goes, the uncomfortable truth is that people aren’t as important as they think they are.  If there is insufficient staff to provide cover for legally mandated annual leave then that is a Them problem.  What happens if you’re suddenly hospitalised, or worse?  You’d be out of the door in a heartbeat if it suited the business (ask me how I know).

At which point Google set about copying iOS as much as they could. ‘Do Not Disturb’ has been part of iOS since 2018 in iOS12, it was a standalone app before that. So six years as an integrated feature.

Just three short years after Android. 😁

I have a work mobile that I have to remember to charge then turn on every six months to put a code in when laptop password changes. All calls are through laptop. Switch it off at 5pm then don’t think about work until whenever it is the next time I am in.

The stuff that needs done when I’m away will get done eventually when I’m back.

I’m aware that all I’m doing is turning next Tuesday into an absolute shitter of a day when I try and catch up and undo all the cockups

This is the one I struggle with anytime I have a week off. Not disastrous cockups but the need to put things right to avoid snowballing problems and inefficiencies. I try and get on top and in front of things in the week before (so ends up being a tiring week), and expect on my return to have a bit of a shitty week or two.

Is there some sort of misconception here that works emails need a response immediately?

Even if I know someone is on leave, I’m not not going to stop sending emails to them and I’m not expecting any response until at least a day after they return to work.

I’m certainly not gonna compose an email and leave it sitting in my draft folder until they return to work then (hopefully) remember to press the send button…

And beside, the email may be sent to multiple people anyway so who gives a toss that one of those people may be on holiday.

I just ignore my work email and Teams at weekends or when I’m off. It’s not difficult but I’m not in a safety/security/financially critical industry.

I work a rota but when i get home i forget the place exists until I’m almost ready to go back again. I dont mind if some of the lads are stuck with something and i get a quick message as it’ll probably be 5 minutes at most but if i was on a 9-5 Monday to Friday and they started this the phone would be switched off.

I’m certainly not gonna compose an email and leave it sitting in my draft folder until they return to work then (hopefully) remember to press the send button…

Outlook prompts to fit in with an out of office autoreply nowadays.

Funny how different people approach this though. I never select that option when sending emails as I hate the idea of sitting down in my first day back to a stream of incoming mail more than the idea of a static backlog.

I’ve always went on the assumption that if they can survive when I’m off sick unexpectedly then they can survive when I take some leave.

I’m a person who very much values life outside work more than life in work though.

Unless you work in a small independent firm with a history of loyalty and long standing staff then you really need to understand how replaceable you are. Due to the area I work in there is always a constant flow of staff and as much as some people would like to think they are essential, people rarely miss them for long.

The wheel keeps turning. If it doesn’t then your company has deeper issues.

Regarding phones, if you’re an Android user you can set up a ‘work profile’.  This creates a separate set of apps that are on a different page in your apps drawer.  You configure these apps for work and then you can turn off the work profile with a button press, or on a schedule.  Two phones in one.

Regarding work itself – stopping work at 5pm is not necessarily as simple as it sounds.  I can only work in a job where I care about the work and the outcomes.  If I didn’t care, or I stopped myself from caring, then every day would be hell.  Consequently, I can’t stop caring at 5pm and start again at 9am the next morning.  The only work satisfaction I get is when a customer needs me and I help them. If I didn’t help them then I would not have any job satisfaction.

Of course I need vacation and I plan for it but sometimes it doesn’t work out quite that way. Last week I booked yesterday, today and Tuesday off, but yeseterday we still had some unanswered questions that I needed to work on before everyone else could continue. So I did a chunk of work yesterday because it was short notice, and the people I’m working with, who I know well and have a good relationship with needed me to look at some things – and I did, and I enjoyed it because it satisfied me and we all made progress. I will probably take a good chunk of Wednesday off unofficially.

Caring about what you do at work isn’t a negative; but it has to be because you want to do a good job, not because everyone’s piling pressure on you.