There's no point in ruining an otherwise perfectly good set of days off by checking in on (and perhaps following up on) the office email; after all, it wouldn't really be "vacation" if you're doing anything work related. But the final cost of that decision is large; on my first day back from a week off, I'm finding myself spending a large portion of it plowing through over 500 pieces of "mail". Some of it is important and I have to follow up on it, some of it pure garbage, and the rest of it is the typical back-and-forth newsroom communication that takes place on a daily basis...mostly information that, days after the fact, is of little importance to me.
There's always a temptation do just power-delete everything that doesn't immediately look important, then hope someone fills me in on whatever I missed...or else I can claim "gee, I never got that message". I have not succumbed to that solution to this point (as far as anyone knows).
Then there's always that one "bomb" in there....the message that something needs to be done RIGHT NOW...the message you wish you had received before you left, so you would at least have been prepared for it when you walked in the door. The one thing that, five minutes into your work day, undoes all of the unwinding you thought you had accomplished. It never fails, I get this one every single time.
I couldn't think of a better way to commemorate how much "valuable" work time I'm losing while digging through these messages than by spending that time writing about it here. I'm that much closer to being Andy Rooney...
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