If you are one of the lucky ones who gets to actually stay disconnected while you are on vacation and not have to check in with work, consider yourself to be very lucky.
My Vacation Lady is really looking forward to the time that we can leave our laptop at home when we’re on vacation or better yet, stay off WiFi so that our email doesn’t come up on our phone and tablet. It is always a crazy time preparing for vacation by letting all of our clients know that we’ll be away and arranging for emergency coverage for our clients but it’s just as crazy when we get back just trying to go through all of the voice mail messages and emails that piled up while we were gone.
If that is the type of job that you have, here are some tips on how to come back to a less stressful, post vacation job situation:
1. Lie a little— let your clients know that you will be leaving 1 day earlier than your actual last day at work and tell them that you’ll be back 1 day later. This will give you some time before and after your vacation to ease back into work.
2. Set up voice mail and email messages with your date of return and who to contact in your absence.
3. If you have some high priority clients, let them know a few weeks prior that you’ll be away and this way, you can take care of any of their pressing needs before you return.
4. Check your work calendar before even scheduling your vacation to make sure that you’re not coming home to a huge meeting or important project due date.
5. Set some realistic workload goals— what must be done before you go and also, what can wait until you get home.
6. Set up a to do list in order of priority— what must be done before you leave and in what order, and what needs to be taken care of immediately upon your return.
7. Decide whether or not you want to be accessible to work by phone or email and let your co-workers and clients know when and how often you’ll be checking in.
8. Decide what might need to be handled while you’re away and delegate the rest
9. Most importantly, remember that this is your VACATION and you don’t want to come back more stressed than when you left so try to schedule a day between getting home and getting back to work.
My Vacation Lady can help plan a stress free vacation but we can’t guarantee what you’ll come back to so we hope that some of these tips help.
