Email boundaries don’t work. Try this instead

Imagine leaving work early to collect your children, then logging back on after they are asleep. At 10 p.m., you send a few emails. You don’t expect anyone to answer until tomorrow, but your colleagues don’t necessarily know that. Conventional wisdom says the solution is simple: Don’t send email after hours. But if you don’t, you’ll be behind because you left work early. On the other hand, you’re now creating the expectation that your team also works around the clock. The rule designed to protect flexible working also means everyone works all the time. Why controlling email hours no longer works Despite the proliferation of digital technologies, with artificial intelligence promising to make our working lives even more efficient, professionals are still struggling to stay on top of their inbox. Over the last decade or so, academics, practitioners, and policymakers have strongly encouraged maintaining robust email boundaries. However, the reality of modern work is that it is not completely separable from home, our homes are not completely separable from our offices, and our online activity is often not clearly work-related or private. Flexible work makes uniform temporal boundaries…