Sick and tired of "always on" tech

[Lemming Train]

mr_spock said:

Helpfully, PH doesn’t make my phone/watch/laptop ping. We’re a fairly small company, most of the staff are in another country so staff meetings are rare. All the developers are fine. The silly text conversation was to illustrate that certain people don’t know how to respect others’ time, I have spoken to her about this but it seems to be a common culture to write many short messages. It happened in the day - the occasional night messages tend to be from Australia or the Middle East when it’s their daytime.

I don't think it's anything to do with their culture at all. As i said, they are probably expecting a quick response from you because you have always engaged with them at unsociable hours in the UK and so they've come to believe it's fine to communicate like that. The problem is fixable with some effort on your part by getting them to email rather than IM but it will take some time to filter through. The easiest solution is to just switch everything off when it's your relaxation time and appoint someone within the company to take charge during those periods, and make it clear to them that they should only ring or IM you in an emergency - everything else can be emailed and you'll pick them up in the morning.

I do some consultancy work for a company in Seattle, WA and initially had similar time zone issues myself where they would contact me with a problem they needed fixing at 4.30pm their time which is half past midnight here at this time of the year. In the morning I would often find a 'chaser' email "did you receive my email?" because I hadn't responded to the initial one as I was in bed asleep. After explaining the time zone differences it wasn't a problem and they knew that they would have an answer waiting for them at the start of business the following day.

[rxtx]

I don't get the problem. I work in IT, have done for nearly 30 years.

Just turn the work stuff off.

Edit to add, since time zones do and can cause issues, I'm one of three people and the other two live and work in NYC. I just switch off.

Edited by rxtx on Saturday 17th November 02:43

[unsprung]

.


Realise and Reduce

"...here are all the 'hacks' suggested by respondents... to help claim back and conserve that vital mental focus."

https://medium.com/@render_ghost/your-smartphone-i...


Do Not Disturb

app-specific and granular features on Android

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/do-not-distur...

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/android-oreo-do-not-d...


And Remember

your behaviours and your patterns of response will either "train" your correspondents or invite them to overrun your boundaries

don't forget to use white lists

[sparks_E46]

Work phone always switched off when I get home and left in the glovebox. Next time I’ll see it will be 6:30 Monday morning.

[Teddy Lop]

I use an app called sound profile which shedules sound options, phone won't make a squeak until 8:30am weekdays and 9:30 weekends, used to leave it on 24/7 as I'm a spark and there is the rare occurance where someone might need some emergency help but unfortunately some take liberties or are just plain stupid such as because they're up at 6am thinking it okay to text about unimportant stuff.