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For some people, an out-of-office message is a simple one-line email. For others, it’s an opportunity to make a grand statement about the relationship between work and life. In 2018, Marina Koren reported on the emailers who auto-delete all new messages while they’re on vacation. When she first learned of the trend, she was indignant: The choice “seemed to flout all the rules of email that we, as an internet-based society, had imposed on ourselves and others.” But that may not be a terrible thing, she realized.
Others use their out-of-office emails to either apologize profusely for time away or highlight their indignation at being tied to work or the internet in the first place. In 2024, Lora Kelley argued for the “goldilocks theory of out-of-office messages.” “When it comes to sending a note informing people that you will not be available, it’s okay to simply say that,” she wrote.
However you decide to tell people that you’re going away, transitioning between vacation and regular obligations can get complicated. Today’s newsletter rounds up stories about stepping away from daily life and then coming back to it.
Out of Office
The Most Honest Out-of-Office Message
By Marina Koren
What if you deleted all your emails during vacation and never looked back? (From 2018)
Why Must We Work So Hard Before Vacation?
By Joe Pinsker
The period before time off can be so intense that people need, well, a vacation to recover from it. (From 2022)
How to Pick the Right Sort of Vacation for You
By Arthur C. Brooks
All it takes is matching your personality to the holiday. (From 2023)
Still Curious?
- The goldilocks theory of out-of-office messages: “Many vacation out-of-office emails tell me much more than I wish to know,” Lora Kelley wrote in 2024.
- Hell is other people’s vacations: So please stop Instagramming your travel pictures, Ben Healy wrote in 2019.
Other Diversions
- Alan Lightman: The ordinary miracle of existing
- The richest cat in the world
- Canned cocktails will smash you to the ground.
PS
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “It is breath-stealing to scan the forest canopy and notice you are being seen,” Kelli C., age 63, in Portland, Oregon, writes.
I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Isabel
The post The Philosophy of the Out-of-Office Email appeared first on The Atlantic.
