Thread on emails sent out of working hours. Warning: this does not propose a solution.... As head of a rainbow institute of peoples from 25 nations, all religions and none, I do not, & will never, tell anyone when to work and when to take holidays. 1/

I often send emails at strange hours and have the usual disclaimer in my signature that I do not expect a reply outside of the receiver's working hours. BUT... I worry this is not enough... 2/

E.g. today - Sunday - lunchtime (and my 1st weekend off since October), I stupidly did a quick email check. I have 30 new messages since Friday night. Now I do have some self-control, so I logged off. But I am left with some low level anxiety that I should be dealing with them 3/

And I am the boss. Literally the head of the whole institute. As untouchable as you can get in academia perhaps. How would I feel if I were a PhD student and these were emails from my supervisor. No matter how great a boss I had, I think I'd still feel pressure to reply 4/

I have no solutions. Except to schedule emails so they arrive in the receiver's working hours. Tho this is laborious & I'm often busy so I forget. I've no solutions. Just worries at the pressures put on us by our wonderfully flexible but dangerously unstructured working lives 5/5