Monday Morning Inbox

I am getting better at not interrupting your weekend! (Now, I need to get better at carving out more of mine!)

I own my own business and so I tend to have non-traditional business hours. When I work with clients on time management and related topics, I am frequently encouraging people to be intentional with their time and how they use it. One of the barriers to that is how many have their work emails forwarded to their phone. I understand why people make that choice – there are lots of advantages. A downside is that people working over the weekend are sending you emails and it is hard to ignore them when they arrive.

Aware of this, I work hard to schedule the emails I compose over the weekend to arrive at 8 a.m. on Monday. It’s my way of being accountable for respecting other people’s personal time.

A few ideas to consider:

If you would like to focus more on family, recreation, and downtime over the weekend, consider turning off your alerts every “Friday” when you leave work. (You can add that to your to do list!) It only takes a moment but can make a huge difference on your days off.

If you are choosing to work over the weekend, make a determination if your message needs to be received and responded to prior to the start of your work week. If not, schedule your message as I do. It shows respect for people’s time away from the work week. Also, it shows some respect for yourself and invests more time in your non-work priorities. That’s a great way to show yourself some respect too.

If your office is working non-traditional hours such as 4-day work weeks, use your out of office message so that those contacting you during normal work hours are aware that you are not available that day and provide them with options.