Prevent a Work Email Pile-Up When on Vacation

There is nothing fun about returning home from a pleasurable vacation: Unpacking, potentially cleaning a space that collected dust while you were gone and scouring for food in nearly empty cupboards and refrigerators make coming home a veritable nightmare. The icing on the post-vacation cake comes when opening your work email to find an inbox of unread messages that rivals a list of thank-you notes newlyweds face after a wedding. Thankfully, Huffington Post co-founder Ariana Huffington contrived software to make it less daunting to return to the grind.

Thrive Away is a mobile app that makes it easier to return from a blissful getaway, miles away from that annoying ping with every new message. The app automatically distributes your incoming email messages into piles: important or not important. Incoming messages only sent once are directly deleted and an out-of-office message is sent to the sender. But if a message is sent twice, the software recognizes it may be of higher importance and leaves it in the user’s inbox to deal with upon return.

Not only does this tool make coming back to work less terrifying as the mountain of emails one would normally face is incredibly decreased, but it also makes it more difficult for workaholics to check email while on vacation, essentially forcing them to put their phone down and enjoy their time away from screens.

Although Thrive Away is not currently available for widespread use, human resources departments would do their employees a decent service by initiating the software.