Can Staff Ever Turn Off Email, Close Slack and Stay Off Zoom?

You are higher ed staff. You have been working from home for over a year now due to COVID. You spend your days on Zoom meetings, answering email and chatting on Slack.

I have 11 questions for you.

1. Are you always available?
2. Is the expectation that during “normal” work hours, you will quickly respond to emails?
3. What are normal business hours? (Eight to five?) What does “quickly respond” mean? (Within the hour, by end of day?)
4. Can you turn your email off at any point from eight to five? Or at night on the weekends?
5. If you are going to turn off your email, do you let your team know in advance?
6. Do you block off time on your calendar to do deep work on projects? If so, how much time a week are you able to block? And does that time stay blocked?
7. When you block off time for deep work, do you turn off your email? Do you turn off Slack?
8. Are you doing most of your deep and concentrated work outside of normal business hours? At nights and on weekends?
9. Who do you think is setting the expectations that you have about availability? Is it your boss or your colleagues? Is availability about being a good team member?
10. How has COVID changed your ability to do concentrated deep work? Have email, Slack and Zoom crowded out your concentrated work time during normal hours?
11. What would be your ideal in terms of productivity of blocking off times during the week for concentrated deep work? How many hours per week, and in what blocks would you schedule? Would you turn off email and Slack and take no Zoom meetings during this time? Or is that ideal a fantasy that could never happen?