We’ve all been there. You go away for a week or perhaps two and you have the hope of switching off. But you know that when you get back, there will be mountain of stuff between you and ‘normal’ life. And that is even before you get into work! When we do get back in to work, another mountain rears up before you. So, here is some advice on how to manage your return from holiday well. At least from a work point of view.
I am sure that you will have heard the extreme examples. Get in, turn on your computer and select everything in your inbox and hit delete. If it is important, then they get back in touch any way right? For most of us, this just won’t work. Either we are in a job where the expectations on us mean we can’t just do that, or we are the type of person who will always have that nagging feeling we have missed something critical.
So, the mountain of email, the queue of people wanting to ask you things. How do you manage it all?
Cut yourself some slack
If you want to know how to manage your return from holiday well, that’s the principle. Cut yourself some slack. You might want to hit the ground running at full speed, but if you ever tried jumping out of a moving car, you’ll know this isn’t as fun as it sounds. So, cut yourself some slack. Is it really going to kill you to take a day to catch yourself up and get yourself back up and running?
I’ll answer this one for you – most of the time, it won’t. So, here are some tips.
1. Set your out of office honestly, but realistically
Perhaps you know people who come back from holiday on a Monday, but specify in their out of office they are back on Tuesday. I can’t do that as I think it is a bit dishonest. So, I specify that I am on leave, I don’t specify the day I come back but I do specify that I will not be able to respond until the day after I come back. This is honest and realistic. My record for emails whilst I was away was 2,611. Honestly, realistically, I am not going to deal with all of those in a day.
Cut yourself some slack. Be realistic in how quickly you can respond to things and don’t put a gun to your own head.
2. Write a to-do list for your first day back BEFORE you go away.
This is especially helpful if you are away for 2 or more weeks. You forget things. There are many things to write on this list that will be helpful. Cut yourself some slack. Item 1 – highest priority, make a cup of tea or a cup of coffee.
Then, note anything you need to note that it will be helpful to reminded of as soon as you get back in.
Your to-do list then needs to walk you through the rest of the day.
3. Take time to catch yourself up
My to-do list for the day will then cover processing all of my inboxes and clearing them. Best way to do this is in date order. Ordinarily I would advocate starting with the oldest first. If you’ve been away, start with the newest. Some of your older emails may have been dealt with by others or have follow up information that comes in later. So, start with the newest on this one.
If you have colleagues that you work closely with, you might also want to ask them for their updates on what’s happened.
Process it all fully, and bring any actions into your system.
This normally takes the morning
4. Take time to re-focus and plan the rest of your week
In the afternoon, I follow up on all of this by going through a normal weekly planning session and re-focussing myself for the week. The idea is to get yourself into a position where by day two back at work, you back to being focussed and considered in how you plan to use your time.
Now, the way to really harness the power of all of this is with a checklist. You know your job. You know yourself. You can write a return to work checklist and then you have it ready to go, with a little tweaking, every time you go away.
So, that is how to manage your return from holiday well. Cut yourself some slack, make yourself some tea/coffee and write yourself a return to work checklist.
