Having a neater environment to come back to will help ease your return from vacation.Ĭompose your out-of-office message. Why add more tasks to your pre-vacation checklist? The reason is simple: clutter can increase stress. Straighten up your desk. This may sound counterintuitive. That means less work to return to when you’re back. And it will help ensure that your colleagues feel genuinely responsible for covering those tasks while you’re out. It might sound like overkill, but knowing that you have someone capable in place to handle this for you can go a long way toward relieving your own stress. Let your boss know who will be handling what while you’re gone. Send them a follow-up email thanking them for their help, and including any information they might need. Figure out who can best handle each part of your job, and ask that person if they can cover for you while you’re out. People are impressed by those who commit to their vacation time as thoroughly as they commit to their work.Įstablish a handoff. In most businesses, someone can handle certain tasks that might pop up while you’re away - or, at the very least, explain to clients that you will handle them upon your return. ![]() Some people worry that being out of reach will damage these relationships, but I’ve found consistently that the opposite is true. You can even put the dates of your upcoming vacation in your email signature as a reminder that you’ll be away. Tell them you plan to unplug during vacation. This helps put the onus on them to bring you anything essential before you go. Send out the word. Make sure your boss, colleagues, and clients know the dates you’ll be gone. If you’re taking two weeks off, start prioritizing a month before you go. If you are taking a week off, start at least two weeks earlier. Notice that I said, “a few weeks before.” Don’t wait until the week of your vacation to do this. If you don’t stick to your priorities, your tasks - and your stress - will pile up. Other tasks and opportunities will pop up, but unless they’re essential, focus on your list. Then, use this mutually agreed-upon list to set priorities and plan your work for each day. ![]() Show it to your manager and get their feedback. Prioritize. A few weeks before your vacation, make a list of the tasks that absolutely must be done before you go. These simple techniques help achieve a more meditative state at any time, and will help you focus and maintain some calm as you take the rest of these steps. If you don’t have time to immerse yourself in a full meditation experience, at the very least take on the posture (sit tall, spine straight) while breathing deeply, using more lung capacity, and imagine the positive feeling you want to gain while you’re away, such as clarity or calm. As vacation gets closer, try to visualize what it will be like. In general, I recommend taking a few minutes to meditate every day. You don’t have to put off letting go of stress until vacation. Much of the groundwork for a lower-stress return from vacation happens before you ever leave the office.īuild relaxation into your routine. Over time, by advising clients and coming up with strategies for myself, I’ve pinpointed crucial steps that help minimize stress while maximizing productivity. ![]() I regularly hear from them when they’re most stressed - which, all too often, comes just before and after vacations. This reflects concerns I’ve heard as a meditation coach for people in all parts of the corporate world. “In the past two weeks, I’ve worked 24 extra hours, at least,” said one respondent preparing for time away another, who’d just returned from vacation, expressed the mirror-image problem: “I have felt very stressed about the amount of time it is taking to catch up.” ![]() A different survey also found that taking time off was a source of anxiety, even though paid vacation was a benefit they’d earned.
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