5 Steps To Banish Post Vacation Productivity Blues At Work

“Excited to get back to work after a long vacation, said no one ever.”

True indeed! Our hopes of resuming work after a vacation with full energy and creativity are usually dashed. Post-vacation blues hang heavy upon us, making us feel miserable and sulky. The chunks of emails, piles of files and list of pending tasks waste our hours.

Having experienced it myself and heard similar stories from colleagues at my workplace, I was wondering how one can deal with the post-vacation blues and get back to work with zing. A few discussions with colleagues helped me to come up with a few tips for the same. Here they are:

Leave small notes to yourself

Make small notes of the ongoing or pending tasks and stick them at your workstation. It’ll help you resume your work easily and recollect the tasks, engagements or meetings that you need to take up.

Out of Office message to your rescue

It is advisable to drop a straightforward, helpful and honest out of office message before leaving for a vacation. This limits the expectations of an immediate response. Also, if you are working with external parties, specify the contact person in your absence. 


Connect with people


A fifteen minutes interaction with your counterparts at work will help you to get up-to-date on the work that happened in your absence. This will help you to be prepared for the upcoming tasks and understand the emails that have flooded your inbox. Also, it will make you feel positive and smoothen your transition to your regular work routine.

Read emails at the last

Post-vacation, avoid starting your first day at office reading emails. Read them carefully at the last or at a time when you have relaxed a bit. Opening the deluge of emails at the beginning of the day can make you feel clueless and dampen your spirit.

Prioritize and make a to-do list

It is always good to make a to-do list for the tasks at hand. After getting an idea of the work progression in your absence and reading your mails, you can easily prioritize the tasks and enlist them. This will help you to avoid missing out even on minor tasks and be efficient at work.

Follow these ideas and banish the post-vacation blues.
 

In collaboration with Women’s Web, the media platform that enables women to tell their stories.