Vacations are surely great, but when you have a busy job (rather than a couple more weeks of summer break) to come back to, they can also be stressful.
So this week on the Huffington Post Nicole Williams, author of Girl on Top (it’s a business book, people) is offering her top tips for making sure your summer get-away, and your return, are stress free. Her advice:
• Choose your return date with care
o Many experienced travelers like to get home on a Friday or Saturday, allowing them selves the weekend to re-acclimatize. Similarly, consider returning toward the end of the week and slipping into work for a day or two to get your feet wet. Enjoy a weekend at home and then really plunge in on Monday.
• Set up voice and email notifications
o Let people know that you’re away and will not be checking email or voicemail until a specific date. In your absence, provide someone else they can contact. You might give your return date as a day later than it really is in order to buy yourself a day to get organized upon returning.
• Tidy up
o We all know that it’s so much nicer to return to a clean house, so why not a clean desk, too?
• Be in the moment
o While you’re on vacation, try to put work out of your mind. The more quickly you’re able to sink into vacation mode — something that takes many people a few days to do — the more you’ll gain from your time away.
• Get in–or out–of touch
o Decide in advance whether you’ll have any contact with the office while you’re away. If you tell people that you’re cutting all ties for a week, then there will be no expectations of you. On the other hand, if you say you’ll call in, be sure to follow through.
• Decide whether or not you’ll check email
o Be honest with yourself about your relationship to email. Just as some people can’t drink only one drink, others can’t look at only one email. If you’re the type who will get sucked into an hour’s or more worth of work time and stress, then leave your laptop at home and ignore Internet cafes. However, if you can open email and perform light triages with some well-timed messages, then go for it.
• Check your attitude before you return
o That first day back can be like a dip in a cold pool. Make a real effort to be positive about returning to work. Choose one or two things to look forward to, be it a coworker you’ve missed or an interesting project.
• Focus, focus, focus
o Give yourself a day, at least, to carefully go through the emails, phone messages, and paperwork that arrived in your absence. If you get sloppy at this point, you’ll regret it in a few days.
• Look ahead
o Still feeling blue or overwhelmed about being back? Get out a calendar and check your favorite travel sites and start dreaming of your next adventure!
