Warning: I’m a bit cranky today.
Late last month, I dashed off a quick email to someone I work with – and was a bit chastened to get an autoreply “I’m out of the office for Thanksgiving”. It was just another Thursday afternoon for me, but I’d forgotten that it was Thanksgiving in the U.S. (Thanksgiving comes six weeks earlier here in Canada; by the end of November, there isn’t much left in the fields to harvest and be thankful for.) It’s not hard to find people arguing passionately that one should never email people outside work hours. The argument is that it shows disrespect for work-life balance, suggesting either that the sender doesn’t manage their own work-life balance, or that they expect the recipient not to manage theirs.
I think the argument is wrong. Not because work-life balance isn’t important – it is! But proscriptions on when you send emails are neither a necessary nor a possible way to encourage it. Continue reading