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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

Com­plete­ly off dur­ing the vacation?

They then strug­gle with being com­plete­ly off work when they are sup­pos­ed­ly free over the vaca­tion. Some­thing was not com­plete­ly fin­ished after all and some­thing else could use a bit of tweak­ing since it did not turn out as well as it should or could have. Know­ing that they under­per­formed in some way nags at them and it takes days to wind down.

If only they had begun to wrap things up soon­er. If only they had remem­bered to do every­thing that real­ly need­ed to be done before the last day at work.

If this is what it sounds like in your mind as well when try­ing to wind down, there are a few things you can do right now that will pre­vent your next vaca­tion from being at least ini­tial­ly spoiled by stress and increase the chances of it becom­ing more as you want it to.

Do this

Think about what the last few days before the sum­mer vaca­tion were like for you; how did you feel and what did you do? Giv­en what you just thought about, what could you refine, change, and do bet­ter in your ​“I am about to go on vacation”-routine until next time? Could you:

• Reserve more time in the cal­en­dar dur­ing those final days for fin­ish­ing off your tasks and projects for the sea­son, and/​or
• Book a meet­ing right now with your clos­est col­leagues dur­ing one of the final days where you go through all the things that need to be done before you or every­one leaves for vaca­tion, and/​or
• Cre­ate a to-do task in your to-do list in which you ask your­self to select which tasks you will need to com­plete before the vaca­tion and remind your­self to sin­gle them out using a tag, label, or cat­e­go­ry that will com­pile your ​“to-do in order to have a rest­ful vacation”-list. Set a date for this ​“com­pile the list”-task that will make it due a few weeks before you leave the office for some time off. And/​or,
• Pre­pare some­thing else that came to mind just now that will increase your chances of hav­ing a more com­plete and less stress­ful end to the sea­son — and make your vaca­tion more rest­ful too.

More as you like it

If you start prepar­ing what you wish to do before your next vaca­tion, right now when you have your most recent one fresh in mind, you will increase the chances of your next vaca­tion becom­ing more how you actu­al­ly want it to be. This means that you now eval­u­ate the ​“before-I-go-on-vacation”-process, draw con­clu­sions regard­ing what went well and what did not, and refine it a tad so that your future life becomes slight­ly less full of stress and slight­ly more organized.

What’s your way?

How did you pre­pare your­self and your work before the vacac­tion to round things off at a rea­son­able tem­po and to wind down quick­ly once you were off work? Feel free to leave share your thoughts with me. 

(So how do you get start­ed effec­tive­ly after the hol­i­days? Feel free to check out my tips for sift­ing through and wash­ing out — to make sure noth­ing falls through the cracks!)