A Tip for Your Voicemail and Email Out-of-Office to reduce stress when you get back from time off

Hi everybody, Randy Dean here, Email Sanity Expert. Hey, wanted to give you a— I'm not sure if this is an email etiquette tip or if this is a time and expectation management tip as we head into a holiday weekend. If you're about to set up your out of office, here's a little tip I've used several times in my career, which I believe really helps set you up for a you better return to the office after either a holiday or a vacation. And I call this a little white lie. Here's, here's the little lie. When you set up your out of office, let people know you will be in the office a half day to full day later than you'll actually be in the office. So let's say you're coming back from vacation On a Monday, you tell everybody you'll be back on Tuesday. See the idea here? The idea is to set appropriate expectations so people aren't driving you crazy right when you come back from a batch of time off so that you can then have some time to weed through everything that's come in during your time off. And do you think people are going to be upset with you if you get back to them earlier than they expected? Probably not. Now, the one exception, you might want to tell your boss the actual time you'll be coming back from vacation. But this is one that I've been using both on my voicemail messages, and also not just my voicemail messages, but my email out of office for many, many years now. And I found it has greatly helped reduce the stress of that first day back. So hope you like this one. Have a great holiday. Bye now.