When You Take a Sick Day…

When you take a sick day, how do you feel?

• Guilty like you've gone and selfishly removed a day's worth of productivity

• Worried that you'll have so much piled up when you come back

• Anxious because you are so essential people can't get by without you

• Relaxed because you're helping yourself get better

• Semi-productive because you end up crawling in bed with your laptop and working anyway

I'm sick today and have been all weekend. Luckily my firm is of the "don't come to work when you're sick, we'll still pay you" mindset.

But, it makes me feel guilty. That guilt leads to semi-productiveness. And that semi-productiveness leads to me sending out emails and putting out as many fires as I can from the comfort of my home. I'm still getting rest. I have plenty of tissues at hand and I'm comfortable in my sweatpants.

Unfortunately, I know people who don't get (free, unlimited, or any) sick days. Are you one of those? Do you have a laptop you bring home?

My suspicion is you don't. You're not doing guilty work at home like me.

Vacation Ethics

The dilemma is simple: I get next Tuesday off for Christmas (thanks, Christians) but I don't get Christmas Eve off. I have a Monday gap. The same goes for New Years and New Years Eve. These floating days off in the middle of the week sound like "well you'd take those weeks off anyway."

Wrong.

What if I don't want to take the time off? What if I want to get lots done while everyone else is at home? What if I don't celebrate Christ-related or late-night-binge-drinking holidays? I'm forced to shut down along with the rest of the country?

Okay, fine.

But I have no work to do on Monday. I have no clients to work with on Monday. Why don't we just get Monday off, too? Hmm, I'm faced with the following:

What would you do in this situation?

What's on your Holiday wishlist?

'Tis the season where family and friends start asking the dreaded question: what do you want for Christmas? I was actually talking to my girlfriend about this and she made a very excellent point:

At this stage in my life I don't need more "things." I'm at a point where I value experiences over things.

Brilliant. As a student of the uber-successful Tim Ferriss I agree entirely that I'd much rather a few bucks towards a ski-trip in Canada over a few bucks towards a new suit. Sure, it's not as fun for parents but its more meaningful to me.

The way I see it, in twenty years I'm not going to think about how nice that jacket looked. Instead, I'll stop and remember the great time I had.

Besides, we have too much stuff anyway. This year I'm going to ask someone to donate to a cause in my name or sponsor my upcoming adventure. That sounds like a pretty good wishlist to me.

What's on yours?

When email becomes an addiction

I've thought a lot (more) about how I operate since reading The 4-Hour Workweek. One big part of my life, and probably everyone's reading this, is email. It was almost like a game refreshing Gmail, trying to spot the elusive 'Inbox – (1)'. I've stopped playing that game! I suggest you do, too.

The problem

When you're constantly checking email (or constantly being distracted by some sort of notifier) either two things are wrong:

1. You aren't doing significant work – You're bored, you have nothing better to do so you go to see if there's something you can read, respond to, etc. Email was dictating me. It turned into my todo list. That's wrong! I need to control my own tasks. Email shouts 'urgent' but not always 'priority'. Unfortunately we treat it as such.
2. You're wasting time on a task that can be batched – Batching is putting together a lot of the same tasks into one dedicated activity. You don't go shopping for an individual cucumber do you? You don't run out to grab a bottle of ketchup when you notice you're running low, right? No, you make your grocery list and go shopping maybe once or twice a month.

So why do we treat email like something that constantly needs to be addressed? Well, if you keep treating it like it's a necessity it will become one. People will get used to instantaneous responses and continually flood you with (usually) unnecessary email.

The proposal

I've started doing this myself and I've realized the world won't come crashing down on me. I only check my email 4 times each day.

1. First-thing (8:00am) – See what the rest of the world (including EST) has left in my inbox for the day.
2. Mid-day (12:00pm) – Now it's time to see if there's anything that came up in the morning that needs to be addressed this afternoon.
3. End-of-day (4:00pm) – Has anything else come up? Any last things to take care of before business-end?
4. In the evening (8:00pm) – Some things arise at dinner, not usually. This is when more personal emails come in (people came home, jumped on Facebook, etc.)

These regular intervals line up with everyone else's day, right? You can focus on your major tasks of the day and take care of email when you're good and ready.

I find I'm spending less time sitting around and more time focusing on my priorities. And guess what? Nothing has suffered. If people need me immediately they know my phone number (its on the bottom of every email!).

The reservations

Now, this might not work instantaneously in a business environment but you can certainly talk to your boss about it, right? Ask them to try it and show them how much more productive you can be. Let them know you don't tolerate time wasters. Heck, do a dry run without telling anyone. You can check email like usual, but keep track of the number of things that absolutely had to be taken care of right then and there. If you see an email come in that can wait a few hours: ignore it.

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that communication is important. If you don't communicate your intentions this might not work well for you. If people think they can still get to you at any time then they're going to think something is wrong. Tim recommends you kindly let people know you're addressing email at certain times so that you can better serve them. As always, they can call your cellphone with an emergency.

The challenge

Why not try it? Since I'm between jobs right now I haven't had this experience with my new employer, but I intend to. It's done well for me working at home (and with personal email). Like I said, instead of looking at my inbox for a task I now look at what's really important (in my task list).

In fact, in the last few weeks I've found that 4:00pm usually doesn't hold much email waiting for me. I can probably check three times a day, instead. That's my goal starting next week.

So, I'm curious: why are, or aren't, you going to try limiting your email to designated times?

Behind the new look

Happy Sunday, everyone. My name is Devin and I've been helping "the guys" develop a new website. I spent a lot of Saturday making sure everything transitioned smoothly but if you find any bugs please contact me.

So, what exactly can you find on our new site?

• Branding – We've created a logo and "look" that sets us apart from other weblogs. When you bookmark us you will see our logo show up as the icon.
• Home Page – Employee Evolution is more than a blog so we didn't want the home page to focus solely on the recent articles. The home has been designed to get visitors to where they want to be.
• Popular Posts – Newcomers and old timers can both benefit from finding the best posts we have to offer.
• Author Profiles – On the side of every article is a mini-bio about the author so you can learn more about them. We invite you to become a guest author and contribute, too.
• Share This – Find a post you really liked? Want to email it to a friend or send it to digg? Now it's as easy as clicking the button at the bottom of any article.
• Related Posts – When you visit articles you'll see a section in the sidebar dedicated to helping you find relevant content.
• Comments – Now you can get an email whenever someone replies to an article after you have. Now you don't have to come back and check all the time!

But what about some of the bigger additions to Employee Evolution?

• Archives and Articles – Here you can easily navigate all of our content including some of our more noteworthy articles. You can sort by date or category.
• Jobs – We want to help you find good jobs and excellent employers. Check the jobs section for regular updates.
• Press – We've been featured in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and more. Check here to find more millenial content.
• Contribute – Again, we'd love to hear your story, tip, etc. Visit our contribute section to learn how to become a guest author.
• Hump-Day Humor – We want to make sure you don't miss out on the laughs. Just click the button to the right to view the latest installment.

We've got plenty more in the works, too!

Hopefully the new design is helpful to you. We'd love your feedback so please leave your comments here (or feel free to privately contact us).