[r3bl]

Why would you agree to have work communications on your phone in the first place?

Assuming you work at a desk job (like a programmer), keep work-related items off of your phone. If your superiors complain, tell them you don't want to be responsible for leaking company secrets if you happen to lose your phone. If there's an emergency, your teammates could signal you that your help is necessary via SMS, and you can use a separate device to help them out.

Don't sell your soul to your employer. I always establish this limit when starting a new position. My phone is for personal use only, and no work-related communication (business email, Slack etc.) would ever go near it.

[dkersten]

I used to have work email and slack on my phone, but, yeah, I now only read work communications on my laptop, during work hours. If there's something urgent that needs to get to me after hours, they can call me instead. I don't work outside of work hours anymore unless its really urgent and I try to not think about work much outside of work hours. The rest of the time is my time, not theirs.

[Freak_NL]

This. Just open a browsertab with Slack (or MatterMost if you want a self-hosted alternative) when you're working on your laptop or desktop computer. Close it when you're done working.

No one is asking you to be active on chat on your personal devices all the time.

[deanmoriarty]

Call me disfunctional or workaholic, but after I tried the strategy you are suggesting I wasn't happier at all.

Specifically, I personally am able to keep my work stress level in balance just if I have all work communications (especially emails and slack) on my phone, so that I can take a quick look at what's happening even when I'm not working.

This doesn't mean I actually end up working after hours: in fact, 99% of the times I just skim over the push notifications in a few seconds and go back to what I was doing.

I found it to be much less stressful than having to wake up in the morning and see the massive burst of activity that happened between 5pm and 8am (especially if your team is distributed across different time zones like mine).

And God forbid if I did that when I go on a 2 weeks vacation, I actually wouldn't be able to enjoy the vacation at all because I would always be thinking about the mayhem that's waiting for me on my return. If I am able to glance at the notifications a few times a day instead and occasionally reply on some really high priority stuff, it calms me down because I can get an idea of what has been happening.

I'm not sure this is healthy, but I tried your strategy several times and it never worked for me, and this is also in different contexts (e.g. different teams and/or employers). It might also be because I have always held a position of tech lead/manager, so in general there is always a stream of people who are asking for my input on something (that being said, I heavily rely on delegation and people are fully responsible for their own decisions, but they just end up pinging me regardless because I have significant contexts about the projects).

[saltcured]

The implied expectations here are part of what bothers me so much about Slack. The people who really embrace it are putting too much of the burden of communication on all recipients instead of on themselves when they produce content. It is selfish and inefficient since every recipient has to do the same redundant work to sort it out.

Careless mixing of realtime chatter, async memos, and reference documentation leads to a fear of missing out. You have to wade through a stream of junk to see if you missed something important. Eventually, people even expect you to know the whole stream whether you were present or not. How mad! If something important happened during your vacation, someone in your organization should tell you about it once you return. Otherwise, you should return to a clean slate, only tracking the chatter that happens while on duty.

In the best recent office cultures I've seen, instant messaging is used without history. It's water-cooler banter or popping your head in the next office. Important but still transient things can go in email and be read a week or two later when you return, but there aren't so many of them. And stable things go in a wiki, not in email, i.e. if subsequent new hires are supposed to know about it too. Nobody should be onboarded by telling them to crawl through transcripts of previous work weeks, and a proper vacation lets you return as if you are onboarding.

By the way, early in my career, these same types of careless people abused email the way they abuse Slack today. Busy people dealt with hundreds of emails in a day, not counting spam nor automated notification messages, which weren't so common then. Your inbox would be flooded with realtime chatter, async memos, and attached documents that should have been in a repository somewhere. Eventually, those with enough clout were driven to set auto-reply messages that they are on vacation and no email received during their absence would ever be read.

[namanyayg]

I'm a tech manager too and my experience mirrors yours. Most of the time I don't even have to reply, but some times a single message from me can help move things forward. Cannot imagine not being in touch via phone during vacation.

[slfnflctd]

'Taking a vacation' is, to me, something of an outdated concept. It usually boils down to a lot of stress and expense for a string of experiences-on-rails which don't meaningfully connect you to anyone or provide you with anything of lasting value. You're better off staying closer to home and making the most of your time off to bolster your relationships and living situation. I see zero problem with including some more relaxed interactions with your workplace in this.

If you need to 'get away', for real, what you really need is a sabbatical, and to hand off all your work responsibilities to other people. Then you can unplug more fully and might actually stand a chance at finding true value and connections with other people in a more extended trip to a part of the world you've never visited.

[chachachoney]

>> It usually boils down to a lot of stress and expense for a string of experiences-on-rails which don't meaningfully connect you to anyone or provide you with anything of lasting value.

That's how some people vacation. There's a whole host of meaningful activity that falls between vacation as product and a sabbatical.

[namanyayg]

I'd differ; I feel that a change in the weather, scenery, or food is good enough. Like going to a cold higher altitude area or to sunny beach cities. Unfortunately, such landscapes aren't anywhere close to me. Or like I got to try new food in Vietnam. Change it what makes it all fun, in my opinion? It does cost money, but I keep a vacation fund aside for so I can comfortably enjoy such brief luxuries.

I'm waiting to get the opportunity to do a _complete_ sabbatical. One day.

[cardiffspaceman]

For me, going to a hotel an hour a way for one night has unexpectedly resulted in a lot of relaxation. The first such trip was not meant to be so relaxing but adding the hotel stay and having dinner at a fancy restaurant really broke us out of our routine.

[icebraining]

> don't meaningfully connect you to anyone

Yeah, and they have some other advantages too. Disconnecting from people is half the reason I need a break in the first place.

[namanyayg]

Ahaha, in vacation mode I keep communication with most people around me zero. Only the closest the relationships & things that directly make me more money :)