Will you check emails during this Christmas/New Year period?
Why?
This is supposed to be family time and the time extended families tend to get together. Make the most of it without being distracted by beeps and alerts of work emails. You know how it goes; you check emails, you look, now your distracted, you check up on it and it balloons until your in the back room hammering out some reply with multiple recipients – you don’t want that at this time of year. Focus instead on your family, extended family, friends and associates. Relax or play hard, but get away from work for a while!
Moving Away From Email
In fact it seems there is a recent movement to minimize the effect of too much email, and even to eliminate emails. Volkswagen announced today that their employees in Germany will no longer receive company emails 30 minutes after their shift ends and they won’t start up again until 30 minutes before work under a union agreement, the BBC reported Friday. And the French technology giant Atos CEO Thierry Breton, said internal emails were “wasting the lives” of employees and the company would ban them in 2014.
Can you step away from checking emails for a period of time? If you really think about it you probably can. If it was really important then you’d get a phone call, not an email anyway.
Ways To NOT Check Emails
Here’s some suggestions to help you extract yourself from work for a period of time and enjoy the moment of where you are.
- – Set up Outlook autoreply saying you will not be checking emails during this period of time.
- – Designate a specific time of day to check your emails – say early morning, and then ignore them the rest of the day.
- – Change the alerts on your Smartphone to vibrate rather than have a distracting audible alert.
If you can, pause or temporarily disable buisiness emails to your smartphone. - – Separate your business emails from personal emails so that you don’t need to check if it’s Aunt Sally or Corporate Head Office.
Have a wonderful Christmas and New Years everyone!
Be safe, be warm, and unplug for little while!