When you first start a new job there is definitely a pressure to perform well. You're fresh, inexperienced and very young compared to some of the people in the office. You want to fit in, you want people to be impressed by you and you want to get promoted so that your bank account won't look like it had suffered  a personal GFC.

Something you will probably be given when you start at this new job is a company email address. This is usually quite exciting. yourname@bigcorporation.com. It has a nice ring to it and you get a strange sense of satisfaction at the personalised signature that every email goes out with. Maybe that bit is just me and maybe it says more about me than I would like it to.

You may even get an induction checklist, an exciting piece of paper that is meant to disguise that you are just another cog in a very replaceable series of cogs. One of the items on that checklist might be, "Set up email on phone". Seems fairly innocuous right?

Soon you are settled in and life is going well. You've got clients, a nice spot you like to go for lunch and you know that Kathy from accounting will be having a birthday soon which means a nice lunch out on the company money.

But something is nagging at you. A little niggle in the back of your mind. You sit at home after a long day, checking your phone and answering your client emails. There may even be one from your boss, asking for your figures from last week. Sure, you could answer it when you get in the next day but what the heck? You have your phone and the figures are just a click away.

A few weeks later and things have maybe deteriorated a bit, one of your clients is a monstrous beast from hell that seems to think your every waking hour should be spent thinking of them and that time spent dreaming of things that aren't their profits is a cardinal sin. Your phone might go off at 3 in the morning, the client is an insomniac and knows you check your emails at home and has sent you an updated graphic to use. This one was designed by his grandmother who saw a play once. At 3 a.m. it is not a pleasant picture. The next morning it has not improved.

Nevertheless, you deal with the problem and soon the client is happy again. Or at least placated enough to go back into their den. Still, your mind is one edge. Now, whenever your phone buzzes in the night you check it. You can't afford to miss an email as it might mean losing a client and that would mean you were directly to blame. For not checking your emails. At three in the morning. Time you are most definitely not getting paid for.

Now we have the problem.

It may make sense to have your emails on your phone so that you can deal with fires that might occur when you aren't in the office but you need to set the expectation that, just because you have the ability, does not mean you will also use it to perform work out of the hours you are paid for. This isn't an argument against all the extra stuff that sometimes needs to get done, that has a time and a place, but rather a suggestion that you should remember that your leisure time is yours.

Doing work for free at home might work for some but it will also lessen the time you give yourself to relax and unwind. Turn the phone off, sleep without thoughts of what might happen and finally feel that knot that has formed in the back of your head unravel.