When I go on leave I try to restrain myself from reading e-mails until a day or two before the end of my holiday. I then check to see if there is anything that needs dealing with before I get back into work, or anything that has changed the schedule of my diary for the first few days back. A number of people in the university have my mobile phone number and if anything really eneds my attention they know they can ring me. Generally no one does, although I remember one occasion when a colleague and I had a long phonecall about an urgent matter at the end of which she said "Could we meet up for a coffee later today to talk this over" only for me to inform her that I was standing just outside a department store in Regensburg, Bavaria.
The Vice-Chancellor went off on holiday at the weekend, and before he went and told him not to read his e-mails - and he promised to try not to. I am standing in for him. Indeed, today I have no sign that he has opened his inbox, but I suspect that within a few days it will become clear that he has done so when osther people tell me about his views on various new matters - showing that he has been in touch.
The problem is that it is so easy to get into e-mails - while waiting for a train, sitting in a bar waiting for the drinks to arrive, or surreptitiously behind a newspapers. Today I have had four e-mails from people who I know are said to be on holiday. None was urgent - all of them could have waited. Two of them came from 'behind' bounceback messages. In other words the individuals concerned had put up a vacation message to say they were away and would not be responding to anything until a given future date - but they had then gone on reading their mail, and answering at least some of it.
Perhaps I'm very old-fashioned, but I think a holiday is a holiday. Work and non-work time get intermingled during the rest of the year, but they shouldn't do so during a holiday. I'm taking a week off at the beginning of September. If anybody catches me reading and sending e-mails before late on the Thursday of that week I will have broken my resolution and failed to take my own advice!
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