The Philosophy of the Out-of-Office Email

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.For some people, an out-of-office message is a simple one-line email. For others, it’s an opportunity to make a grand statement about the relationship between work and life. In 2018, Marina Koren reported on the emailers who auto-delete all new messages while they’re on vacation. When she first learned of the trend, she was indignant: The choice “seemed to flout all the rules of email that we, as an internet-based society, had imposed on ourselves and others.” But that may not be a terrible thing, she realized.Others use their out-of-office emails to either apologize profusely for time away or highlight their indignation at being tied to work or the internet in the first place. In 2024, Lora Kelley argued for the “goldilocks theory of out-of-office messages.” “When it comes to sending a note informing people that you will not be available, it’s okay to simply say that,” she wrote.However you decide to tell people that you’re going away, transitioning between vacation and regular obligations can get complicated. Today’s newsletter rounds up stories about stepping away from daily life and then coming back to it.Out of OfficeThe Most Honest Out-of-Office MessageBy Marina Koren What if you deleted all your emails during vacation and never looked back? (From 2018) Read the article.Why Must We Work So Hard Before Vacation?By Joe Pinsker The period before time off can be so intense that people need, well, a vacation to recover from it. (From 2022) Read the article.How to Pick the Right Sort of Vacation for YouBy Arthur C. Brooks All it takes is matching your personality to the holiday. (From 2023) Read the article.Still Curious? The goldilocks theory of out-of-office messages: “Many vacation out-of-office emails tell me much more than I wish to know,” Lora Kelley wrote in 2024.