With all the time we are spending online these days, the blurriest line is the one that exists when work “begins” and where it “ends”. Even over Breaks and weekends, we may be inundated with emails from the community that we feel compelled to respond to right then and there. (Note: If you find yourself spending the bulk of your time responding to messages with the same content, then check out this short video that shows you how to create email templates).
To maintain a little work-life balance, and to let our community know we’ll get back to them during “working hours”, we can use one of the most powerful tools at our fingertips: “Away messages”. In Gmail, this is referred to as the “Vacation Responder”. Check out this quick video that shows you how to create a Vacation Responder:
Creating a Vacation Responder message, and having that enabled outside of our “working hours” allows us to get a little bit of peace back into an otherwise overwhelming time in our lives. As the year progresses, and you find yourself in need of a more balanced life, consider turning on your Vacation Responder. It’s just one small way that we can go about reclaiming our time in the new year.
