An email alert came in on a Sunday afternoon. I was on the couch with my son watching a Formula 1 race. I have a rule about not checking email on weekends and I mostly keep it. I checked anyway.
That notification bubble is hard to leave alone. Answering took 4 minutes. Getting my head back out of work took the rest of the hour, and the race was over by then. Nobody did anything wrong by sending it. Working a weekend is your own call, most of the time.
I do not get the “most of the time.” I am in a leadership position so when I send at 8pm, “whenever you get to this” and “I am working, why aren’t you” arrive as the same message, and my team cannot tell which one I meant. The send makes the choice for everyone on the distribution list.
During my years in Boston I was the 100-hour-week guy. 12 to 15 hour days, 7 days a week, and once more than 4 months without a day off. I told that story with some pride for years. Now it embarrasses me. My family saw very little of me and my health paid for the rest.
So I write when I want to write and I schedule the send. Outlook and Teams both do it. A 5pm Sunday message lands at 8am Monday. People call that theater. The work still happened Sunday and nobody is fooled by the timestamp. The expected response time is identical either way.
What changes is whether my name is in somebody else’s Sunday afternoon.