HOLIDAYS. You remember them, surely? The sunburn, the prickly heat, the heady August hours spent queueing at airports while a grumpy man ran a beeping stick up your legs. Whatever. It’s September now and that means time to focus on work, not play.

And when we say focus on work, we mean it; no chucking sickies or using the work phone to set up job interviews. Time (Sept 11) reports on the rise of telephone monitoring software that alerts managers when staff, say, mention a competitor’s name. Or your boss could track you using GPS and your mobile phone, leaving you with the awkward task of explaining why your explosive stomach upset hasn’t precluded a visit to Alton Towers.

It’s not always laziness that distracts us from our professional duties; sometimes we’re simply overwhelmed by events in our personal lives. Whether you’re planning a weddding or trying to cope with a family illness, the trick is to compartmentalise your life to keep work and home separate, reports www.CareerJournal.com.

Other people would rather merge their lives. The flexibility of the seamless approach suits Richard Donkin, a columnist for Human Resources (Sept), but doesn’t go down as well with HM Revenue & Customs. He says that the taxman would rather we kept the two separate. He tells the story of an associate who does freelance work for an opera company and who tried to claim a tax deduction for buying opera music on CDs; listening to it is an important part of her job, but her admission that she also enjoyed it meant that the inspector disallowed her claim.

Also frustrated with inspection are the fed-up techies featured in BusinessWeek (Sept 11). They’ve spent years struggling to make their public companies successful; now they’re ready to smile provocatively at the private-equity players who might buy them. “They believe their companies can thrive outside the glare of public scrutiny,” the magazine says.

So, they think scrutiny is a burden? Sheesh, they should try hiring a woman of childbearing age. Some three quarters of company directors say that extending maternity leave will create such an administrative burden that it will discourage employers from hiring fertile ladies, reports Personnel Today (Sept 5) — suggesting that whatever you get up to in your personal life, it should involve a condom.

WHAT ELSE HAPPENED

• If your boss is just back from holiday and you feel as if he never left, perhaps that’s because he didn’t. www.onrec.com reports that 68 per cent of British managers surveyed by the Aziz Corporation take a BlackBerry on family holidays. Two thirds of these losers — sorry, workaholics — check work e-mail at least once a day, with one doting parent in ten admitting that it provides a welcome break from their families.
  
  
  
  
• Managers had better make the most of the precious refuge that is work, however, because one day life will be one long family holiday. Figures from the Labour Research Department suggest that while most of us will work until we’re 68, FTSE-100 directors typically retire at 60, or 50 if you work for AstraZeneca. Oh, and those at the very top can look forward to retiring on 71 times the basic state pension for a married couple, or £9,615 a week, says management-issues.com.
  
  
  
  
• It’s heads down now until Christmas. Sigh. Fifty per cent of employees surveyed for the workplace advisers Croner blamed the lack of public holidays between now and December for feeling unproductive at work, reports www.hrlook.com.
  
  
  
  
• Accountancy pays, literally. Newly-qualified accountants in London can expect to earn up to £65,000 a year, according to Morgan McKinley, a financial services recruitment firm. Turn to page 9 for full ICAEW results listings.

Times Recommends

• Inspirational leadership
• How to get a new job
• The reluctant CEO