JOHANNESBURG â As technology makes the world smaller, and the concept of remote work creeps into dinner conversations, one of the bigger talking points is when and how to switch off. And when you finally work it all out and go on vacation, work hangs on and travels with you in the guise of a phone. Whether it be blue lights, or loud beeps, the interruptions are there. So what’s the best way to switch off, and avoid the dreaded burnout? The Wall Street Journal’s David Pierce looks for the secret to disconnecting… – Stuart Lowman
The Secret to Disconnecting? Bring Back the âAwayâ Message
By David Pierce
(The Wall Street Journal) – When you head out on vacation this summer, you will want to properly get away. No checking in with the office, no sneaking a peek at your inbox and no occasional Twitter browsing just in case BeyoncĂ© drops another surprise album. With the help of an out-of-office email responder and a little bit of willpower, you might even pull it off.
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But while you are blissfully floating down a lazy river somewhere with Do Not Disturb turned on, everyone else will keep trying to reach you. They will text, they will call, they will email your personal address. Since they wonât know you are on vacation – how could they? – they will wonder why you are not answering.
Over the last year, gadget and software makers have developed ways for users to better manage their relationship with technology. They make it easier to ignore notifications or quiet all but the most important stuff. Apple and Google have both announced software coming this fall that gives you even more control over your screen time and dulls your phoneâs hold on your life. It might be even easier to disconnect next summer.
But even the latest updates donât address the entire problem. In this always-on era, we are assumed to be near our phones all the time, and there is no good way to signal to the world when we are not. There is no way to proclaim, âIâm not available, I wonât see your notification, and I wonât care until next Sunday.â
The solution isnât complicated. In fact, it has been around since the â90s. It is called an âawayâ message, and we need it now more than ever.
Going, going, gone
Most peopleâs first experience with an away message came on AOL Instant Messenger. Those were the days before mobile, when you could only be online while sitting at the computer – probably a wheezing beige colossus running Windows 95.
Rather than log off every time you had to run to the store, AIM allowed you to change a small icon next to your name from green, which signified you were online and available, to red, which meant you were temporarily indisposed. You could also write a brief message that appeared underneath your name on the buddy lists of all your chatting partners. AIM became famous for its cryptic, dramatic-song-lyric away messages – nothing signaled interpersonal drama quite like âDonât cry because itâs over, smile because it happenedâ – but more often it was âOut to dinnerâ or âHomework.â It always communicated the same thing: Iâm not here right now, so donât try to chat with me.
Away messages helped users understand why their buddies werenât responding. More important, away messages offered permission to actually go away. If someone needed you urgently, they would try another route, but mostly they would leave you alone. You werenât ignoring them on purpose; you were just gone.
When AIM was the biggest game in town, away messages were easy. Now users flit between apps, talking to some friends on iMessage, others on WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, all while doing business on Slack, email and Hangouts. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as being away from your computer now that your computer is in your pocket or even on your wrist. âGoing onlineâ used to be a thing; now online is the default status.
The good news is, users are starting to recognize the value of getting away for a while. But disconnecting now is a bit like hanging a âDo Not Disturbâ sign on the inside of a foot-thick concrete hotel-room door with impenetrable locks: Housekeeping might be standing out there knocking all day, but you would never hear it. That technically solves the problem, but in the exact wrong way. People should be able to see your Do Not Disturb sign and keep on walking.
Want to get away?
The best solution would be for Google and Apple and everyone else to work together to build a sort of universal status indicator for the internet. But donât hold your breath.
More realistically, every messaging app should have an away message option. Even if you have to set five auto-responders every time you take a breather, it would still help. We are not far from that, now: In addition to an email auto-responder, you can already set your status in WhatsApp, and Google recently announced an Out Of Office feature for Google Calendar, which will automatically decline all calendar invites while you are gone.
If your company uses Slack to communicate, its status feature is perhaps the best of its kind. It can let others know when you are on a call or in a meeting. It can even sync with your HR software to automatically say you are away when you are scheduled to be off.
Appleâs Do Not Disturb While Driving, an iOS feature, points to something more powerful. When enabled, it will automatically respond to incoming messages with something like, âIâm driving! Iâll get back to you when I get there.â If you are in a car using Googleâs Android Auto software, it can do something similar.
You can already tweak those settings to serve more purposes – changing the outgoing text message or turning the auto-responder on manually – but this feature should be far more flexible, and compatible with non-Apple apps. No matter how you try to reach me, I want a way to automatically respond, âIâm in a meeting, if itâs urgent please callâ or âIâm out of the office, go away.â
Right now, the best you can do is try and warn everyone, set all the statuses you can, and try not to worry about it. I have found posting a few gratuitous âIâm on vacation!â Instagram posts can help people remember, too.
For the messages that still come in, you can help yourself a bit using the text replacement settings on your phone. On the iPhone you can go to Settings > General > Keyboard, choose Text Replacement, then tap the plus sign. Create an entry where typing âvacayâ becomes âHi! Iâm on vacation, and not checking messages. Iâll get back to you when I return.â
The first time you send it, the recipient might be confused – after all, nobody has seen an away message in a while. But you can bet they wonât text you again, and they wonât wonder why you didnât respond. They will know you are on a lazy river and are not to be bothered.
Write to David Pierce at [email protected].
