Fast Company | Business + Innovation: There are many ways to distance yourself from the crushing tidal wave that is your work inbox. You can, for instance, impose an email sabbatical, which is supposed to be good for your mental health. Or you can plow through all of your emails in one go with the savvy use of search filters.
8 comments:
Although the Guardian Report may exaggerate the Workers' Union "ban", it is a novel idea. In theatre, many of the people on a production team may need to be reached quickly as a new idea is had, a budget returns poorly, or tech chaos ensues. I believe there are periods of time in the production process and periods of the day that distancing yourself from email wouldn't hurt. During the day, if you're busy working but check email at least every 3 hours and aren't expecting an email, you should be fine. If you have your email pulled up and are constantly checking your phone you probably won't be productive. I think you should try to keep your phone nearby so you can receive calls but avoiding chat and casual text conversations is a must. In the evening, if you want to distance yourself from work and you're not in the midst of a crucial production phase, I believe it's permissible to not check your email until you go to bed. I certainly don't think a "no emails after 6 pm" policy would work for theatre but paying attention to how digital communication is controlling your time is a must.
Clearly as a worker, I think this is excellent, but it is so ridiculously counterproductive. I know there are some people who are basically unable to pry themselves away from their email for an hour or two, but there are also people who prefer or for some reason are required to work past business hours, and putting a legal restriction on people like this will make it hard to do business with anyone in France. They're essentially shooting themselves in their own economic foot. This is almost as obnoxious as Italy's legislation against working on Sundays.
This is brilliant. I feel there's a vicious cycle that goes on that this tactic may resolve! There are many people who are frustrating to communicate because they never respond to emails, so we end up sending many at various times of the day. Because of this, the recipient is overwhelmed with mail and dreads the moment they have to open up all the messages they've been behind on. However, if there was a generally designated time that people had to check their mail, I think this cycle would become a lot more efficient and a lot less painful. BUT, at the same time, the beauty of email is that you can get a brilliant idea, or discover something urgent, in the middle of the night, type it up, and fire it out for everyone to read in the morning. It can be really convenient to have email 24/7 as long as a) you don't let it consume you and b) the people you communicate with are not non-responsive.
I'm not sure that this rule is at all enforceable (what would you do, report someone for responding to an email that you sent at 5.55?), but it's certainly interesting. We talked about work-life balance just recently in PTM, and I know email is one of the things that has become most intrusive to having a home life seperate from your job. I recently got a smartphone, in large part because it's assumed here that if an email is sent out at any time of the day that you will be able to read it within an hour. We've gotten changes for crew calls in the middle of the day and other important notifications that I would totally miss if I didn't have a smartphone. At the same time, most of the emails I recieve really could wait a few hours- I don't need them immediately on my phone. It's made everything quicker and more efficient, but its also enabled a lot of bad planning. If you can assume someone will read an email immediately, you can procrastinate and not send it until the last minute. I'm guilty of this too, but it's really hard on all the members of an exchange.
I'm torn, because on one hand, there were probably similar cries of outrage when the US instituted various labor laws like minimum wage etc. But then again, hypothetically the French population also consists of adults who are capable of enforcing boundaries between work and home life. Now, what I do think would be useful, both in France and the US, is a law that prohibits employers from penalizing workers who do not respond after hours emails/phone calls. That would leave the option open for people responding, but it would also mitigate some of the more egregious abuses of workplace communication.
This is really funny! Especially since in the SOD sometimes I feel as if I am being attacked with email at all hours. I think this is a good idea but at the same time it will severely limit communication amongst people. Its also important to remember theatre people regularly work at odd hours of the night anyways so having a no email after 6pm policy seems strange. I think the endgame here is people need to learn how separate there work life from there personal one. My father runs our own family business as a contractor and therefore has his office in our house. The phone is always ringing past 5pm but he has a policy that he wont answer after regular business hours in order to keep his personal time honored.
I think this proposal illuminates a larger debate of separation of your personal life and work life. I for one feel conflicted on this proposal. While I understand taking some personal time each day might be healthier and lead to a more sustainable lifestyle, I feel that I would be quite anxious not knowing if something important has happened or something urgent needed to be communicated. Especially in the entertainment industry where decisions and changes can be made on a dime and the work schedule is not necessarily 9-5, I'm not sure how feasible a proposal like this is.
Forget it, I vote for the 3 day work week...
Although this seems like a nice notion, it's a ridiculous idea to enforce. I'm not sure how they are even planning to enforce this! I'm more curious at how workers in France are responding to this. Are they appreciative or frustrated that they cannot receive emails after 6 pm? What about those in the theatre and night-life industry? For those jobs, this idea seems very frustrating. Although, allowing for people to walk away from work is nice, it's not realistic.
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