Vacation Pro-Tip: Take An Extra Half Day Before Starting Work

One of the worst things about coming back from a week long vacation, besides all the laundry, is going back to work on that first day. In order to get the most out of our vacation we travel back on Sunday and then head back into the office on Monday, where we become totally bombarded with all the backlog of work that’s been waiting for us.

We have hundreds of unanswerd emails, meetings to jump into and decissions that have been waiting for us to make a call. You usually end up coming in early and staying late for the rest of the week, just get caught up.

I kind of stumbled upon this one by accident, but I’m dissapointed I didn’t think of it earlier. This last trip, after we returned on Sunday night, my kids had camps to be at on Tuesday. So I took Monday morning off to help them pack and get ready. But knowing how much work was waiting for me I set aside Monday afternoon to get through email and a few other things that had been waiting for me. My out of office message was set so that no one expected me to be back until Tuesday, so I had no meetings or calls I had to make. As far as everyone else was concerned, I came back from vacation on Tuesday.

Monday morning, I slept in, exercized, helped my wife around the house, and made a much needed food trip to Costco. Then after lunch I opened up my laptop and caught up. When I walked into work on Tuesday morning, I wasn’t stressed out; I felt on top of things and was able to have a reasonably normal and productive day.

I won’t likely do this when I’m just taking one or two days off, but from now on when I take a week or more off, this is going to be my standard practice.

Do you have any tips for making the transition from vacation back to work, easier?

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Originally published at tacanderson.com.