Going away for a week? Write the away note for your jobs, not just your inbox

Everyone writes the out-of-office message. Almost nobody writes the other one: what happens to the work that is still moving while you are gone. The recurring report that still runs on Friday, the half-finished research, the follow-up you promised on Wednesday. They don't know you left.

A job away note is short, and it is written for whoever, or whatever, will be running things while you cannot answer questions. It works just as well if you are off sick or moving to another project. Five things belong in it:

What keeps running, with its schedule and where the results land. List each recurring job and when it runs.
What pauses, and what "paused" means. Say which jobs stop completely until you return, so that nobody wonders whether they were forgotten.
What can be decided without you. Be concrete: "pick the lower-cost option of the two if the difference is under a set amount", "move a meeting within the same week", "send the reminder". Give the limit and say what to do when it is reached.
What must wait for you, and how a person can reach you if it cannot. "If money is involved, wait. If a deadline is at risk, message me first."
When you will look at the results. Name your first day back and what you will read first, so that what comes back is organized for that moment.

The third item does the real work. A helper without limits either stops at every small question or guesses at big ones. A list of decisions it may make, with a ceiling on each, lets it do the useful middle.

Add one line you will be glad of later: how to tell that things are going well. "If the Friday report arrives with its usual three sections, all is fine." It helps whoever is covering for you spot a problem early, and it gives you a quick check when you return.

Finish with a test. Read the note as if you were the person covering for you, on a Wednesday afternoon, with something odd on the screen. Could you tell, from the note alone, whether to act, wait or reach out? Wherever you would hesitate is a sentence the note is missing.

A hypothetical away note, for illustration: "The status report keeps running on Fridays and lands in the team folder. The vendor research is paused until I am back. You may reschedule meetings within the same week. Anything involving money waits for me. I will read the status report first when I return."

Octuo is a personal assistant and one starting point for work across AI, tools and specialist services. It keeps working on long, multi-step jobs over time, it reports back when a job is done, and its skills, sub-agents, scheduled routines and integrations can be added and changed by you, or by Octuo when you ask. You grant the permissions, and an away note is a good place to write down what you have granted. Octuo is available for macOS.