In the June 2016 edition of From My Perspective the question was – “are you actually going to take a vacation or will you just be working away from the office?”
So how did you do? 1) Successful at not taking calls from the office? 2) How many work e-mails did you respond to while on vacation? 3) When you didn’t take the call or respond to the email did you feel compelled to respond if they texted? I’m interested in knowing how people are handling the expectation of always being available so please respond if you get the chance.

My scorecard: Excellent overall, 1) ZERO calls to or from my office. 2) Pretty good, only two emails sent. 3) ZERO texts sent about business. We had five full days in the mountains outside of Brevard, NC with really not much to do but slow down and enjoy hiking in the forests surrounding the many waterfalls. I arrived back in the office feeling the vacation needed to be longer (don’t we all) but I did receive the recharge I needed.

So with the summer vacation season behind us perhaps I’m not much better about checking email or text messages each time a new one arrives. I believe I am better at not checking it while with others and maybe this vacation reinforced that every message does not requires an immediate response.