Relax and Recharge:
Try a Modified Digital Detox and Don’t Check Emails on Vacation
August is a popular time to take vacation and one of the best ways to relax and recharge is to unplug from work. It is harder these days with many of us attached at the hip to our smartphones. We check emails when we wake up, in addition to chat messages, comments on Facebook, and news on our Twitter feeds. While a true vacation would mean totally unplugging from our phones, in reality this will not happen; we still need our phones for personal use. At a minimum, we can unplug from work emails.
Most of us use an “out of the office reply” on our work emails, saying we will have limited access to email or, if we are brave, none at all. But, according to Randstad, an HR consulting company, 42% of employees feel obligated to check their email while they are on vacation. And 26% feel guilty about using all their vacation time.
Breaking it down by generation, only 18% of Baby Boomers said they feel guilty versus 40% of Millennials. Why the difference? One answer is that Baby Boomers (born between 1946-64) are further up the corporate ladder and with more seniority feel they don’t have to prove themselves regarding time off. Millennials (born between 1980-2000) being at the beginning of their careers are hesitant to take vacation and when they do, they check emails so that they appear to be hard working and industrious.
Every generation has its own attitudes and values. Looking at work-life balance and technology, there maybe another reason. Studies about Millennials say there are four F’s this generation places before all else: Fun, Family, Freedom, and Friends. But then other studies say Millennials, more than any other generation, don’t feel the need to delineate between work and life.
An overwhelming number of respondents –67%– reported feeling more productive following a holiday, which means that some people both checked email on vacation and reported higher productivity upon their return. Employees in this overlapping group may have found a balance that kept the separation of a vacation and managed the build-up of tasks that often undo any of the effects of rest. Some people find satisfaction in being able to occasionally check in rather than come back to an overflowing email box.
If you have to check work emails on vacation, limit yourself to once a day. Checking in many times per day or even limiting yourself to three times a day (the morning, after lunch, and the end of the day) is not unplugging. And turn off the alerts on your phone. Every time you hear that sweet sound that alerts you to a new message, you stop what you are doing, open the message and get drawn into a work email, whether it is important or not. So take a partial digital detox and turn off the notifications for incoming mail.
By Theresa F. Weber
