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

A more pleas­ant start

But through­out the years I have found and been giv­en tips regard­ing a few things we can do to both get a more com­plete break from work as well as get a more pleas­ant start when we get back to the office. Here are a few tips which are the only thing I want to give you before you leave work for a vacation.

Do this

• Do what you can to main­tain the relax­ation and feel­ing of vaca­tion for longer, even if you are back at work.
  • If you had a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er tem­po when you were on vaca­tion, then be gen­tle with your­self for the first weeks back at the office. Take more breaks than you usu­al­ly would. Per­haps you choose to take a 5 minute break every hour for the first weeks back? Set the count­down timer on your phone for 55 min­utes and work until the bell rings and reminds you to relax a lit­tle. Do absolute­ly noth­ing dur­ing these five min­utes and they will feel longer. No social media, no chit-chat with col­leagues, no cof­fee, nothing.
    
  • If you enjoyed swim­ming dur­ing your vaca­tion, then put swimwear and a real­ly small tow­el in a plas­tic bag in your brief­case or car. Take a look at a map and see if there is an alter­na­tive route you could take home from work which allows you to pass by the ocean for a quick dip. It doesn’t have to take more than ten min­utes to stop by a cove, dive in, drift away for a few min­utes, get up, get dressed and head home. A few moments of vaca­tion on your way home.
    
    Do you live far from the ocean or a lake? Then find a mead­ow to lay on your back in for five min­utes dur­ing your way home. As long as it is not rain­ing a few min­utes of con­tem­pla­tion under the open sky is a kind of vaca­tion as well.
• Reserve time to process e‑mails .
  Take out your cal­en­dar right now and reserve suf­fi­cient time dur­ing the first days back at work to process and deal with all the e‑mails you will have received. As long as you are not one of those who sim­ply delete all new e‑mails on the first day to ​”start from scratch”, you will need to address them all one by one. And you will be wise to do so soon­er rather than lat­er.
  
  I usu­al­ly count on hav­ing to spend one full day on pro­cess­ing e‑mails for every week I have been out of the office. If you do not reserve time specif­i­cal­ly for pro­cess­ing you e‑mails, you risk hav­ing too many meet­ings sched­uled dur­ing the first days back (mean­ing that you will bare­ly have time to open the inbox at all), and then you will end up hav­ing to car­ry an old-emails-to-process-back­pack for the next few weeks.
• Reserve time for tasks and meet­ings.
  You might already be aware of cer­tain to-do-tasks and meet­ing which you sim­ply have to get done or attend dur­ing your first weeks back at the office. Sched­ule the meet­ings now in the cal­en­dar and also reserve a suf­fi­cient num­ber of hours for your­self to com­plete the impor­tant tasks you know have to be done.
  
  If you have already sched­uled much of what will hap­pen dur­ing the first weeks, you can relax a lit­tle know­ing that there is enough time and space to do what needs to be done then with­out wor­ry­ing that you will have to spend the first work­week plan­ning things last minute and there­by imme­di­ate­ly feel­ing stressed.
• Take out mate­r­i­al your col­leagues might need while you are away.
  Final­ly, think about what your col­leagues might need from all your dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal mate­r­i­al when you are away. Take out any papers, fold­ers and binders you think of and put them on your desk where they will be easy to find. Send short­cuts and URLs to the col­leagues who are cov­er­ing for you. This sig­nif­i­cant­ly decreas­es the risk of receiv­ing incon­ve­nient calls when lay­ing on the beach some­where regard­ing ​”where that one doc­u­ment is”.

Less stress and in control

If you ded­i­cate just a few moments now, before going on vaca­tion, to do one or a few of these things, you will be repaid plen­ti­ful­ly lat­er. You will not be inter­rupt­ed as often dur­ing your vaca­tion and the start-up peri­od once it is over will be smoother. What could have been a few ter­ri­bly accel­er­at­ing days filled with stress will instead be some­thing you feel you can han­dle with­out get­ting stressed or tense.

What is your way?

How do you ensure that you get to enjoy your vaca­tion more thor­ough­ly by hav­ing good struc­ture? Share your thoughts with me.

(Did you know that tak­ing a delib­er­ate, whole­heart­ed break ben­e­fits your per­son­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty?)