Taking a week off

Last week I took a week off to go on holiday with my family.   During the whole week I didn't read any email or do any work.

This seemed to have suprised most people as I got lots of replies to my out of office which said...

I am now out of the office on vacation until Monday 4th June.  

During this time I will NOT be checking email or voicemail.

When I return on 4th June it will obviously take me some time to catchup with the backlog of emails. So if your email is urgent in nature and requires a response within the first couple of days of my return then please resend your email with URGENT in the subject line and I will action it as soon as possible.

My blog is always a good place to find information https://blogs.msdn.com/jasonlan

I had lots of emails from people asking - are you really not doing email - It seems most people were quite shocked that I wasn't reading email whilst on holiday.... now some of this maybe because I have been naughty in the past and have done email whilst on vacation ... I do find though that although it reduces 'inbox guilt' you still end up thinking about work.

Now out of the 700+ emails in my inbox (I filter everything that isn't sent TO me or CC to me) only 12 people actually resent their email with URGENT.  Is it that they didn't read my Out of Office or that their email wasn't important/time critical even though over 350 of those emails had their priority set as high importance!

What disturbs me though is that working on holiday, being maniacally busy and prioritising work over any other activity seems to be the new status symbol.... (check out the debate on our moof.mobi blog)

Having Mobile access means I can choose when I do work not enforce I work all the time... for instance I have my device set to push email between 7am and 6pm every weekday but I sync my device manually outside of that.  On holiday I didn't hit the sync button once. 

Now I'm back I'll be catching up - so if you did email me - expect a reply in the next few days :)

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 05, 2007
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• Anonymous
  June 08, 2007
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