專心享受假日 休假時別看郵件

On most things about working life, most people agree. Diversity is good; bankers’ bonuses are bad; creativity is good, box ticking is bad, and so on.

關於職場生活的絕大部分事情，絕大部分人的意見是一致的。多樣性是好的，銀行家的超高獎金是不好的；創意是好的，形式化的程序是不好的；等等。

But there is one thing on which there is no agreement at all: whether it is OK to check emails while on holiday.

但是有一件事人們的看法各不相同：在休假期間查看郵件，到底好不好？

Last week’s news that staff at Daimler can free themselves of this holiday tyranny has got the two sides fighting again. The carmaker’s novel scheme means that all messages landing in the inbox of someone who is away automatically destruct, and the sender is told to contact someone else instead.

不久前傳出的新聞——戴姆勒(Daimler)員工可以從這種郵件暴政中解放出來，讓觀點相左的雙方重新爭執起來。這家汽車製造商的新方案意味着，所有發送給休假中員工的郵件都會被自動刪除，發件人會被告知聯繫他人。

Hooray for Daimler, said some people. At last, a chance of getting a proper break. Madness, said others. It is crazy to be so doctrinaire when spending a couple of minutes a day checking what is happening at work is so easy and so efficient.

一些人爲戴姆勒歡呼——至少，這樣就有機會真正休息了。其他人說，這簡直是瘋了。每天花幾分鐘查看工作上發生了什麼是這麼的簡單有效，如此教條化的處理方式實在不可理喻。

Which side is right?

哪一方是正確的？

I have just passed this summer in violent disagreement with myself on this matter. Three years ago I wrote a column coining the word “worliday”, and declaring myself to be a great fan of it. A worliday is where you do light work when away, with the result that you can take longer breaks from the office than you would be able to take otherwise.

在這個問題上，我剛剛以非常自我矛盾的態度度過了這個夏天。3年前，我寫了一篇專欄，造出了一個詞"workliday"（“工作假期”），宣稱我自己非常喜歡這種度假方式。所謂的“工作假期”就是在假期時做一些輕量的工作，這樣的話，比起完全不做任何工作，你的休假時間可以更長。

If, like me, you enjoy your job, there seems nothing wrong with doing a little of it as the rain pelts down on the roof of a cottage in Cornwall. Emailing when away, I reasoned, is inevitable, mildly useful, and fine so long as you use the drug in moderation.

如果你像我一樣熱愛自己的工作，那麼當你身處康沃爾(Cornwall)的小別墅裏，雨點打在屋頂的時候，做點工作似乎沒什麼不好。我當時寫道，在度假時收發郵件是無可避免的，只要把握好度，這樣做挺有用，也挺好的。

On holiday this year, I changed my mind. I was sitting in the same Cornish cottage reading a new book by John Lanchester. In it, he quotes a surprising statistic: adults in the UK spend on average less than a quarter of their waking lives working – based on 45 years of working eight-hour days, five days a week with 28 days annual leave, and an 81-year lifespan.

今年休假時，我改變了看法。當時，我正在康沃爾的同一棟別墅裏閱讀約翰•蘭徹斯特(John Lanchester)的一本新書。在書中，他引用了一個驚人的統計數據：除去睡眠時間，英國的成年人平均一生花在工作上的時間還不到四分之一。這個數據是根據81歲的壽命、45年的工作年限，一週工作5天、每天工作8小時，以及每年28天年假計算出來的。

If work takes up so very little of our lives, how come it feels as if it takes up so much?

如果工作佔據我們生活的比例如此之小，爲什麼我們感覺工作佔的時間那麼多？

The answer was in my pocket, buzzing to tell me that I had an email. There was no reason for me to look at it, but I looked anyway.

答案在我的口袋裏，設備震動起來，告訴我進來了一封新郵件。我沒有任何理由需要查看這封郵件，但是我還是看了。

It was nothing – a request for a distant meeting. But even so, I noticed a tiny physical reaction, a tightening in the stomach, a rise in the pulse, a response that was greater than if I had seen the same thing in the office. There is an odd thing going on here: the further you are from work, the more its news disturbs you.

沒什麼重要的事情——只是一個遠程會議請求。但即使如此，我還是注意到自己的身體起了小小的反應，我的胃部感到緊張、脈搏也加快了，如果我在辦公室看到這封郵件，我根本不會有這麼大的反應。一件奇怪的事情發生了：你越遠離工作，工作上發生的事情就越會打擾到你。

I have now changed my mind altogether. There is never any excuse for emailing while on holiday – or rather there are lots of excuses, but all are bad ones. I can think of five straight off.

我現在完全改變了我的看法。休假時收發郵件根本毫無理由——或者說雖然有很多理由，但這些理由都不充分。我能立刻想到的有5條。

You are indispensable. There are decisions to be made and you are the only person who can make them. If you are chief executive and a takeover bid lands in your absence, you may need to do something. But that is not a reason for checking messages – it is a reason for leaving a contact number. Generally, if your employer can’t do without you for two weeks it has serious problems and it may be time to look for another one.

你是不可或缺的。有一些事情需要決定，而你是唯一能拍板的人。如果你是首席執行官，在你休假的時候有人出價收購公司，你可能必須去處理一些事情。但這不是讓你查看郵件的理由，而是讓你留下一個聯繫電話的理由。通常情況下，如果你離開兩週，你所效力的公司就無法正常經營了，那麼說明這家公司有嚴重問題，你可能應該考慮跳槽了。