dammIT

A rantbox

Work mail on (private) phone: a good thing?


Work mail, every working person has it. I have it. Thankfully not lots and lots of messages per day, but it's still a part of my everyday routine. We each got a company-provided laptop with email (and Lync - the old Microsoft Communicator - for phone and instant messaging), which I installed Linux upon with Mozilla Thunderbird and Exquilla which talks to Outlook Web Access. This works fine, but of course only if I'm at my laptop and only if on the right virtual desktop.

Having mail on my phone might be convenient, so I installed Nine on my phone. This enables me to read Exchange mail on my smartphone and have integration of my work agenda and it does so looking really great. I put it on app-level security so I hope they can't wipe my device remotely and set the sync options to only look for incoming mail on workdays between some workishy hours.

However, I'm not sure this is a good thing to have or do. On the one hand, it's really convenient to be able to look up communcations from a pocketable device and it alerts me about some important messages (the rest I filter to other folders) by buzzing my smartwatch. On the other hand, it buzzes me about messages. When I'm busy and want to focus on a problem I'm tackling and trying to ignore my surroundings. Also, it might make me more of a workaholic in the long run. Thankfully, Nine has a two-week trial run before payment is required, so I'm taking this for a test run.

It seems I better not get used to having work email so close under my fingers though. It's not demanded from me and if it were, I think I would like to see compensation of sorts for being so available, starting with a work (sponsored) phone.

On the other hand, Nine is such a nicely crafted email client. I'm really impressed that Exchange-based mail could look that good ;)