What I call fighting off the panic, Peter Norvig; "People get out of balance when they see their value as being able to respond quickly. If I see myself as a machine for answering email, then my work life would never stop because my email never stops. If instead I see my value as separating the important from the unimportant and making good decisions on the important, then I can go home at a reasonable hour, spend time with my family, ignore my email and phone messages all weekend long, and make sure that when I return to work, I am in the right mood to make the good decisions."

I steadfastly refuse to let a company panic me. If I do it means I work all weekend and end up sucking in other engineers into the panic. You usually find out a week later it wasn't that important and could have waited until monday. When we interview engineers I say, "Engineering doesn't work weekends, and when we do it is usually me that does, and before I do I make sure I am texted (not phone) and work it out if it is truly important or not." It means I am a jerk at times, but it works - and is necessary.

More Reading on Work

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• Firing Bad Employees
• Not Answering Emails And Phones On The Weekend
• Simple Desks and Work Environments
• Jason Fried on Distraction, Managers and Meetings