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In my experience , the harmful mental and physical effects of the always on work culture are quite insidious. It is possible to cope with this pressure for many years without recognising or perhaps acknowledging the early warning signs of burnout, anxiety and depression.
The cold which you can't quite fight off, or regularly waking up with a unexplained pain in the back are easily dismissed as just the norm for a busy professional.
Having done just that and experienced the fallout , I am a great believer in only checking emails inside working hours of 9 to 5.30pm and not at all whilst I am away on holiday
Simple answer to the Smartphone problem is not give your personal mobile number to clients and have separate work/personal email accounts, so work emails aren't pinging through to your phone all day.
I take my laptop on holidays and once every day or two I'll boot it up and check work emails. I put all the non urgent stuff into a "when I'm back" folder, so it's not all staring me on the screen, so I can forget it. For the urgent stuff, I'll reply within a couple of days or so, but that's very rare. I have an autoresponder saying I'm out of the office, so clients should know not to expect an immediate reply.
May I ask a question here... what's a holiday? Not had one in years.
My clients do have my mobile phone number as my USP is giving a personal service (ie me - I do have staff but they do the work!). Clients know they can text me at least. However... it is purposely not a smart phone. I get looks when I get out my trusted old Nokia phone (they are coming back into fashion... I wonder why?!) and I explain that I spend my life in front of a laptop screen so dont want to check emails all the time.
I do an autoresponder 'I'm not here' as Ken does when I want a bit of peace or am traveling up the A303 or am having my Friday off shopping or like yesterday when I went to a clients funeral.
But unless I have something urgent on I'll finish at 6pm (no lunch break of course).
I really hope the "always-on" culture doesn’t become the norm in our profession. This idea that you are a good professional, only if you can be contacted by your client/superior at midnight and reply...it seems totally bizarre to me.
I’ll add the caveat that I am in an employment situation, so appreciate that things may be different for those out on their own.
Where I’ve worked before, and to a much lesser extent where I am now, certain people seem to get a perverse sense of pride and superiority by being able to say how they worked all day, never took a break, and then answered emails into the wee hours of the night. Good for you. I went home, had dinner with my family, read the kids a story, then settled down to watch TV with the wife. Funnily enough, we’re both still in a job, and I don’t have clients breathing down my neck all the time.
Never get to use up their holidays as they’ve “too much on”. Spiffing. You’re in the same role as me, with the same workload, but are too busy to do anything out with work…
I sometimes wonder if those “trapped” in the “always-on” culture perhaps have serious problems they have to deal with, and work is a distraction for them. I worked with a guy who was married with 3 kids, and he always worked long into the evening, and did stuff when he went home. I felt sad, for him and his family, that this would be how they were spending their time together. I did sometimes wonder, is there tension with the wife that makes home life unbearable, or does he actually prefer his work.
Life is too short to spend more than you actually have to working. If you genuinely love your job, then great, crack on. But if you feel forced to adhere to the always-on culture, don’t be. It’s your life and you only have limited time, so stop it, and if you’re current role won’t allow for it, then leave for another one.
The idea is to educate your clients so they don't phone,while they are sitting in front of the mortgage advisor, asking for figures.
However as a true Accountant (and not a number cruncher-who I have nothing against) you don't switch off nor do you want to cos you love what you do. It's not a vehicle for earning money, (although that does help) it's a way of life that fits in with everything else. If I'm one of few then I can understand that anything can get you down be it family, work, traffic (that really bugs me), but the answer is that anything that is not life threatening can wait.
I totally agree with this article and never have emails going to the phone. I also set my Outlook email download to 1 hour to avoid being distracted during the working day.
Another trick is to make sure you unsubscribe to unwanted email that keeps coming through.
My hobby - birdwatching - takes me to some pretty remote areas, so when I'm away it's often not physically possible to stay in touch. Lovely! Next hol is Mongolia in a couple of weeks, I doubt there's Wifi in the Gobi Desert ;)
I find Amsterdam is much better for bird watching and there's not as far to travel.
Wait...you're talking about the flying variety aren't you? I feel a bit better about your "remote areas" comment now.
Hmm...you're never quite sure what you're getting in Bangkok.
Amsterdam's closer and you know you're not going to get any...surprise packages...
Well said Richard. Modern Technology should always be used to enable us to be more efficient during the normal 9-5 working day and not to be on call outside of those hours.
One of our Accountancy Clients embraces technology in this way and he and his team work from home too thereby saving on travel, time and office costs.
Of course this means both he and his team are far more productive and motivated!
I no longer need to sit in the office getting bored waiting for clients to bring their books in. The Internet has given me my freedom and I can now work from anywhere in the world as long as I can get online. I have no problem with clients contacting me while I'm away and can usually respond immediately. I still have a few clients who keep paper records but they have to wait until I'm in the office.