By | Sara McCord | www.themuse.com
I check my work email every single day. But even I—the person who checks my inbox during off-hours and saves responses in drafts—dread the idea of seeing an email from my boss over the holidays.
That’s because when it’s hard (and rare) enough to unplug, a message from your supervisor makes you feel like you have to switch your work brain back on. It could fill you with panic that something major went down—or with annoyance that nothing important happened and your manager just thinks you should always be available.
Regardless, emails over the holiday are a situation you want to nip in the bud so you can enjoy the rest of your day.
Here’s how to do that:
1. Set Up an Out-of-Office Message in Advance
There’s an easy way to respond instantaneously without even thinking about it: Let your autoresponder do it for you!
If your boss sends you an email and then has to wait for a reply, it feels like any other day. But if they receive an autoreply that you won’t be checking email until the next workday, it’s a reminder that you’re taking the day off.
Take the opportunity to infuse some personality and show that you’re busy doing something other than work. It looks like this:
