We’ve all been there: you’re trying to enjoy your vacation (or even just your weekend or your off hours) and you get work emails. You have to check them, right? It’s work, it must be important.
But you need time away in order to actually reap the benefits of time off. You can’t actually rejuvenate and recharge from work if you’re still working, and that’s what you’re doing when you check those emails when you’re off the clock. It doesn’t matter if you’re out of town on vacation, having a girls’ night, or just eating dinner in front of the TV; if you work when you’re out of the office, you’re working all the time.
Business Insider has collected some “life hacks” to make it harder for you to check your work email, or get notifications about them in the first place, while you’re not at work. They’ve done this because although many of us know that we should put our phones down and step away from the computer, it can be really hard to do. Here are some of BI’s tips:
- Set your auto-responder to expire a couple of days after you return from your vacation. This will allow you a little time to catch up before going through your inbox and responding to emails.
- Install a filter to separate urgent from everyday emails. Many times, the emails coming into your inbox are really not that important. By installing a filter that automatically dumps unimportant items into a separate folder, you will save yourself a lot of time and energy while you’re away.
- Filter out recurring emails. You don’t need to see every e-newsletter that comes into your inbox while you’re away, so include those recurring emails in your filter.
- Discuss implementing a workplace policy of not responding to emails after hours. This is a cultural change that may take time to implement, but it’s being done at many businesses and so far, it’s worked out just fine.
For the 44 percent of adults who admit to checking their work email at lest once a day while on vacation, or the 10 percent who do so hourly, or freelancers for whom their personal email is their work email, these hacks could be difficult. But they’re worth thinking about, especially if you’re going to be traveling. After all, who really wants to have to deal with work issues while on vacation?