Most people rarely if ever use the Vacation Responder tool in email. When they do, it's typically employed for literal instances of vacation or perhaps extended sick leaves or maternity leave. But you know what? You can type whatever you want into a Responder, and so you really do not need to limit your use to times when you are not working. No really. You can.

If you are already sold on this method and want to skip to the directions on how to set up your Automated Responder in Gmail, scroll down to the first screenshot. Otherwise, let's take a minute to talk about the benefits. The video includes both!

A few months ago I came to the realization that email had more power over my day than I felt appropriate. Have you heard the theory that if you don't set your priorities, someone else will? I didn't want to leave my schedule up to my inbox. So I did what many like-minded business owners have done before me and set up an Automated Responder that I leave up 100% of the time....