At the beginning of September, I decided to turn my ‘out of office’ auto-reply on for the whole month. Here’s what it said:
Hello!
Thanks for your email. I’ll get to it during my morning ‘internet ablutions’ (as William Gibson would put it).
If you need a quicker response than asynchronous communication can provide, please do consider one of the following (in order of preference):
* IRC – I’m on the Mozilla server in #badges, #foundation and #learning (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/IRC)
* Twitter – I’m @dajbelshaw
* Skype – I’m doug_belshaw
—–
Doug Belshaw
Mozilla Foundation
Current timezone: BST (GMT +1)
http://mzl.la/weblitstd
http://openbadges.org
http://dougbelshaw.com
This was actually more for my benefit than for anyone else’s. It gave me a way to internalise that I don’t need to fret about emails at all hours of the day. Working for a geographically-distributed organisation like Mozilla can have huge performative issues if you’re not disciplined with your time.
So what did I learn?
- People will seek you out if they need you urgently. But that only happened a couple of times and it was resolved quickly via Skype chat.
- Colleagues respect work/life balance more than I tend to assume. If it’s 9pm in the UK then they don’t tend to expect an immediate answer.
- Some issues resolve themselves if you don’t answer straight away.
- Email is a chore to many people. Quite a few people expressed solidarity.
It’s certainly been eye-opening to me. I’ve taken my auto-responder off now (I don’t want to abuse it) but I’ll be employing it again during my impending Belshaw Black Ops.
Image CC BY Esparta
I’m composing this sitting cross-legged with my back to the wall in a hotel room in Porto. There’s an occasional gentle breeze that drifts through the open window that slightly chills the back of my neck. I expected Portugal to be warmer for some reason.
The cacophony of seagulls behind outside fades into the background as the sound of church bells fills the air. An earlier glance out of the window showed people getting ready for the day. They take for granted the magnificent, tall buildings with tiled facades; it’s no wonder the centre of Porto is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’m going to spend the entire month of December being a lot more analogue. I’m really looking forward to spending that time increasing my mindfulness. I’ll still be performing my normal work functions for Mozilla, but will tend towards paper to get things done. Meanwhile, I’ll not be using technology for personal communications.
This means:
- I’m not looking at or responding to personal emails
- I won’t be active on social networks like Twitter or Google+
- No new blog posts or weekly newsletters in December
I intend to spend time with my family and read books that have been recommended to me. This digital hiatus is something I’ve done for the past couple of years and would highly recommend to anyone. At a time when I’m feeling slightly weary and cynical about the world it’s a period of rejuvenation that allows me to start the New Year with a bang.
See you in 2013! 🙂
Image CC BY NASA Goddard Photo and Video
![[INCOMING] #BelshawBlackOps12](https://dougbelshaw.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/iamwhoiam2-604x270.jpg)
For the past couple of years I’ve undertaken Belshaw Black Ops. It’s the name Paul Lewis gave to my personal digital hiatus lasting for the month of December. I live in such a fast-paced online world for the other eleven months of the year that I need some time to take it all in!
You can read about what I got up to last year here.
This post is a heads-up to say that during December I won’t be:
I’d hoped not to be travelling either, but my job at the Mozilla Foundation evangelising Open Badges necessitates me going to a few places. Unless you’re also in those locations, the only way of getting hold of me is via my work email. Ask me for it ASAP if you need it!
Just to confirm that I’ll still be around on Twitter and Google+ for the next couple of weeks as well as blogging and writing my newsletter. But after then, leave me alone for a bit, OK?
I need to recharge. 🙂
Image CC BY-NC tantek
