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How to Stay Sane Post Vacation
Summer vacations are awesome! Whether you’ve taken a summer getaway to an exotic island, a family trip to one of the Disney parks or even a “stay-cation” in your own backyard you know that coming back to work after time away can cause enough stress to need another vacation. A colleague of mine said, “Coming back to work after a vacation is like a Monday on steroids.” Not only are your emails and daily tasks piled up, but if you’ve just spent the last week laying on the beach sipping pina coladas, its pretty hard to switch back to the office chair/cubicle mentality. Here are some tips to help you ease back into reality and productivity after your summer vacation.
Give yourself time to decompress
When you are planning your trip, schedule an extra day off on the back end of your vacation before returning back to the office. Give yourself time to unpack, do laundry and grocery shop. Taking care of these types of chores will make you feel better prepared to return to your routine. And if you can’t take that extra day off, don’t overbook yourself with meetings and commitments on your first few days back. Easing back into work mode from vacation mode can help save you from being distracted or unmotivated.
Plan your return
Even without a vacation, returning to the office on Monday after the weekend can be stressful. If Mondays are usually tough days for you, try returning from your vacation in the middle of the week instead. All the craziness of Monday will be long gone and it will be easier to ease back into your routine.
Beware of multi-tasking
When you’ve been gone from work on vacation, coming back to the office can be jarring. You have an inbox full of emails, backlogged tasks that need completing, clients that need attention as well as all your other usual day-to-day responsibilities. Your first instinct is to try to get through everything as quick as possible, but all the multi-tasking will only stress you out more. Use the Now/Soon/Later technique to prioritize your tasks and complete them accordingly. Take things one step at a time as to not to get overwhelmed. Focusing on a singular task will ensure you complete it correctly so you don’t have to revisit it later.
Get back into your routines
The best way to get back into work mode is to get back into your work routine. If you go to the gym every morning before heading in to the office, start that back up as quickly as possible. If you have scheduled weekly meetings, don’t put those off till you get caught up. By postponing your regularly scheduled activities, it will take you longer to get caught up, and it will be more difficult to get out of vacation-mode.
Tell the story all at once
If you were fortunate enough to visit an exotic destination, visit long-lost relatives, or just have an interesting vacation story to tell, you’ll probably want to share it with your co-workers. And they’ll probably want to hear it. To avoid telling the story over and overagain, offer to share your story and pictures at lunch. You’ll save yourself a lot of time, but you’ll save them a lot of time too.