If your office culture allows or even encourages working outside of business hours, it can be hard to disconnect. 

In order to truly relax and enjoy your time off this holiday season, you might have to set some boundaries, says Brandon Smith, a career coach and therapist known as The Workplace Therapist.

And you should start sooner rather than later. Even if your PTO isn't for a few weeks, "right now" is the best time to remind your managers and colleagues you'll be out, Smith says. 

Here's how to disconnect from work this holiday season: 

Remind your boss now, and then remind them again

Your manager probably doesn't remember exactly what days you'll be gone. 

Remind them a few weeks before your time off. And then, when you're a couple days out from your vacation, tell them again. 

"Just say, 'As a reminder it's Wednesday and Friday is my last day in the office,'" Smith says. "Here is a status update. Here is what I've gotten done. Here are the people I've notified."

This will refresh their memory on when you won't be at work, and give them a chance to ask you to prioritize tasks that need to get done before you leave. 

Make your OOO email more personal

Craft an out-of-office email that includes some personal details about your time off.

"People should be a little more transparent in their out-of-office emails," Smith says. "Particularly when they are with their family. It helps to communicate to people a firmer boundary." 

Instead of writing the classic, dry "I'll be  out of the office," you can say, for example, that you're spending time with your family for the holidays. It's hard to justify interrupting someone's family vacation, Smith says, especially if the issue is not urgent. 

Give an emergency contact, if you need to

The unfortunate reality is that sometimes you boss or co-worker will need to contact you. To be a team player you'll want to be available on some level.

"You can tell your boss and other colleagues, 'Hey I'm going to be out-of-office, but if it's an emergency here's how you can reach me,'" Smith says. "But don't make it an email address."

Offering up help via email might result in you just checking your inbox the entire holiday. Give them a phone number, instead, Smith says. This is a much more personal way of communicating, which signals that if someone contacts you and steps over that boundary, they better have a good reason.

Think of yourself as a closed store

Imagine yourself as a store that is only open certain hours a day, says Celeste Headlee, a journalist and author of "Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving."

Decide at what time you're going to hang up the "open" sign, or be working, and then when you'll flip it to "closed," meaning you'll be unavailable.

"With a closed sign there are no expectations," she says. "There is no expectation that if you send the shop an email that says 'urgent' they are going to open up for you."

This mentality can help you draw firmer boundaries.

Mute notifications

"Turn off all possible notifications," Headlee says. If something is really important, your colleagues can text or call you.

"People get scared like they are going to miss an important message, but no one puts something on Slack that is so urgent that they won't just call or text you if you're not responding," she says.

Plus, by turning off all notifications, you don't have to repeatedly make the decision to disconnect.

"If you have notifications coming in from work, you have to resist that temptation over and over again," she says.

Practice going phone-less

Before your holiday time off, take short breaks from your phone, Headlee suggests.

"Start with a walk around the block without your phone," she says.

Then, try going on a 20-minute walk without your phone, or run an errand totally device-less.

The more accustomed you are to not checking your phone, the easier it will be to disconnect.

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