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Channel the Three-Day Weekend
29 August 2023
Allison appreciated one of her employee’s efforts to practice disconnecting while on vacation and was reminded that a national holiday is a great opportunity to start small when it comes to taking a break from email.
Tags: allison read, balance, email, matt richtel, vacation
At Allison Partners we believe in the importance of vacations and especially the power of email-free vacations. However, this summer my colleague helped me to remember that even if you work at an organization that supports disconnection, it can still be difficult to stop checking email. I’m grateful to our longtime managing director, Janie Kast, for sharing a plan to disconnect in her June post and then her reflections on an email-free vacation in her August post. I’m hopeful that reading her story might help others to make a plan to unplug.
However, even if you know you want to disconnect, starting with a whole week of no email might seem daunting. As I read about Janie’s experiment this summer, I was reminded that a great way to start your disconnection journey, is to begin by not checking email on a holiday when you know others are less likely to send you email.
As I’ve worked to help people find the discipline to take email breaks over the years, I’ve learned they sometimes actually like checking email on days when they know they won’t get as much in their inbox or can just clear out spam. While that may be satisfying, it doesn’t help build the habit of learning to not open email in the first place.
If you’re one of our United States-based readers and fortunate enough to have this upcoming Labor Day off from work, I encourage you to join me in doing what Matt Richtel calls, “channel the three-day weekend.” I’m already a bit behind on email this week, so I’ll have to be disciplined and try to catch up if I want to disconnect by Friday night. Who’s with me?
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