<aside> 💡 Fill out that Pre-Vacation Handoff page! Customize to your liking 😄

</aside>

Staying Connected While You’re Disconnected

• Decide how you want to be contacted, if you want to be contacted at all, and communicate this with everyone who works closely with you AND in your out of office communications.
• Think about whether there is anything you’d want to be texted or telephoned about, and let your manager know. There may not be anything! There may be some things! Up to you!
• Ideas:
  • Set up a google doc with your manager or a select few teammates, where they can share updates (big announcements, new hires, departures, fun events, etc.) with you, but you aren’t required to respond or even read them. That way, if you’re curious about what’s going on, or want to poke your head in, you can do it without logging into Slack or your email. Set the expectation that at a minimum, you’ll read through it on your first day back at work.
  • Set up a google form for folks to fill out (example) so that people can more privately share updates or things they want you to know about when you return.
  • Set up email filters or slackbots for keywords that you know you want to follow and be alerted to when you’re gone.

Everyone approaches this differently, and it’s ok to change your mind while you’re out. You may decide you want more or less contact, but remember that either option is ok.

<aside> 💪 Be brave and delete your work email and Slack from your phone while you’re away!   …and then decide if you really need them on your phone when you get back (cause probably you don’t) 😉

</aside>

Filter That Email!

This is my biggest pro-tip. I first figured this out when I went on my honeymoon in 2011 and took 24 days off work - the longest vacation I’d ever taken! I’ve since done it every time I take more than a few days off, but especially for PTO of more than a week. Highly recommend. These instructions work in Gmail; if you’re using another mail client you may have to adjust your dependencies.

Set up two email filters

1. Send all mail to the archive and mark as read
2. Send all mail with “[YOUR NAME] README” in the subject to a special “README” folder

Set up your autoresponder to include something to the effect of:

I am out of the office and will be automatically archiving all email received between now and [return date]. If this email is urgent, please contact [this person].

If this email is non-urgent but you’d like me to read it upon my return, please re-send it with ‘[YOUR NAME] README’ in the subject line, so I will be sure to see it when I’m back. (protip: you can also just use the handy “send later” feature in Gmail to schedule your email to hit my inbox on August 9, or better yet, August 10, so I have a chance to catch my breath a bit 😉*)*

When you come back, you’ll be at inbox 0 (or “inbox wherever it was when you went on vacation”) and you will only have to open that “README” folder to see what you need to pay attention to. Trust me, if it’s not important enough for them to take the step of re-sending it to you, it’s not important enough for you to read. They will always follow up if they need a response.

(of course, your “[YOUR NAME] README” can be whatever you want. make it a secret code word or something silly if you like - it’s your OOO!)