9 Things Highly
Effective People Do After They've Been Away on Vacation
You've had a great vacation but you're not-so-ready to go back to
work. Here's how to handle it.
As an
American, you legitimately could spend every day
of your life on vacation--and still make a good
living. But the truth is, few of us actually do this. Instead, we work hard, take time
off when we can, and face the inevitable letdown
when it's time to get back to work.
I spent last week at the beach, and now I
have to go back to work. So, while I was gone I asked entrepreneurs, business
leaders, and others for their tips on how to get back to work productively
after a great vacation.
Here's the best advice they gave me.
1. Come back on a Wednesday or Thursday.
The
No. 1 tip I heard from people was not to go back to work on the first day after
vacation. However, Dr. Chris Allen, a psychologist and executive coach
with Insight Business
Works, takes it a step further.
"If possible, return to work on Wednesday or Thursday," Allen
says. "Then you only have to get through work for two or three days and
you have the weekend off. It's a good way to ease back into work. Airline
travel is cheaper mid week too."
2. Start the day before.
Caveat:
Not going to work the day after vacation doesn't mean you don't have to doany
work before you return.
Jim
Whitehurst is CEO of Red Hat, the world's largest open source software company,
and author of The
Open Organization. He suggests using the Sunday before you
return to work to "lay out what you want to accomplish that first week
back."
"Actually, I'd recommend doing this
every Sunday," Whitehurst says. "It only takes 15 or 20 minutes, but
I find that a little bit of pre-planning drives much of how I spend my time
during the week."
3. Get up early. And maybe meditate.
OK, you're back. You go to bed and you set
the alarm. What, if anything, should you do differently when you wake up,
compared to what you do on regular workdays?
Get up
early, suggests Nik
Ingersoll, co-founder and CMO of Barnana, and start the day
out with between 30 and 60 minutes of meditation. "Set your
intention for the day/week/month at the end of the meditation. Then go out and
kill it," Ingersoll says.
4. Get your diet right.
Next up: food, and getting your meals on
track right away--after whatever kind of dietary damage you did to yourself
while you were away. (It happens to most of us!)
"Hit
the grocery store either the day you get home or the very next, and cook up a
batch of healthy, whole foods (without added sugar!) for your first few
days," suggests Diane Sanfilippo, author of the New York Times bestselling
book, Practical Paleo. "This will ensure that your focus is on-point and
keep your productivity from tanking."
5. Take a few minutes to find out what
happened.
Now we get to the office--or at least to
Monday morning. Maybe you've been in touch with your colleagues the whole time;
maybe you're better at vacations than most of us and have actually unplugged.
Regardless,
you're probably a little bit out of the loop. How do you get up to speed
quickly? Leon Rbibo, president of The Pearl Source, suggests doing so with a stopwatch.
"I sit down with each one of my key
managers and put 60 seconds on the clock," Rbibo says. "They provide
me with the must-know highlights of what happened while I was out. If it
can't be said in 60 seconds, it wasn't important enough in the first
place."
6. Delete a bunch of emails.
Chances are, you're swamped with messages.
When I came home Friday, I had more than 2,700 unread emails--and this despite
the fact that I'd checked email at least a couple of times a day while I was
gone.
How are you supposed to get through all of
those?
Short answer: You're not supposed to. Maybe
you can just delete them.
Last
vacation, Gene Caballero, co-founder of GreenPal,
said he had 2,000 unread emails, but "instead of sorting through them all,
I deleted everything that didn't have an attachment and moved on. If it was
really important, they emailed me again."
7. If you must read emails, read them in
last-to-first order.
Sometimes
the best recipe for solving a problem is a reverse take on a famous saying:"Don't
just do something; stand there."
That's
why Kate Gulliver, head of talent management at Wayfair,
suggests that if you're not just going to delete your emails like Caballero
suggests, at the least review them using the "LIFO {last in, first out]
method: the most recent emails first."
"I
find that many issues have already been resolved by the time I return to the
office," she says, "so checking the newest emails first is the most
efficient way for me to get caught up."
8. Focus on big projects.
I heard from a lot of business people who
suggested easing back into work. But I have to admit I like the related advice
I heard from two people better: Think big or swing for the fences. They had
slightly different takes on the idea.
First, Spencer X. Smith, a consultant and former vice-president of sales at a
Fortune 100 company, who also teaches at the University of Wisconsin, suggests
having "atleast two high-priority business development opportunities
scheduled for right when you get back."
"Why?
Instead of returning to work with a whimper, these meetings will both get you
excited AND force you to step up your game immediately. That momentum will
carry through the rest of the week," he says.
And
Jesse Gassis, who founded an electronic cigarette company in Brooklyn called Bedford Slims, suggests encouraging people on your team to get out of their
comfort zone and work on "forward
thinking projects, sometimes outside of their expertise"when they come back to the office.
"It could be a new product design, or a
Santa-themed photo shoot, setting up our CMJ Fest party in October, etc.,"
he says. "Truthfully, we will still be working on these projects all the
way up to the deadline, so it doesn't get us ahead, but it does make our
concepts stronger. By doing so, I get people's brain out of Summer 2016 and
thinking about Winter 2016."
9. Actually, maybe don't stop working.
Finally, some truly American advice: Don't
take a real vacation in the first place.
As bad
as this sounds, it's what many of us are doing anyway. (And it's the key to why
I think we can paradoxically be on vacation every day, as I describe in
this article.)
But
Michael Massari, senior vice president of national meetings and events
for Caesars
Entertainment, came out and said what I think a lot of us
are thinking.
"Don't be afraid to blend in work during
your vacation. Take advantage of the technology we have available today, such
as Zoom, Skype, and mobile email, to stay productive," he says. "This
also allows you to go on more vacations for longer amounts of time while not
jeopardizing your productivity."
BY BILL MURPHY JR.
http://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/9-things-highly-effective-people-do-on-mondays-after-theyve-been-away-on-vacatio.html?cid=em01016week33a
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