6 Things Productivity Experts Do When They Come Back To Work After Vacation

Vacations are a much-needed balm to weary souls. A few days of sun, friends and rest can help banish the stress of urgent requests, crabby colleagues and unreasonable deadlines.

But you don’t want your post-vacation high to become a post-vacation crash when you see the pile of work that awaits you. To keep your restorative mood intact, you want to make the transition back to work as smooth as possible.

Here are some of the best tips productivity experts shared on what they do when they come back to work from vacation to avoid feeling stressed by the grind. Their answers were lightly edited for clarity and length.

“One of the most important things that I do before I go on vacation to keep me from being overwhelmed after is I put up an autoresponder that is a little bit more detailed than ‘Hey, I’m out of the office from this day to this day.’

Instead, I have a really detailed out-of-office message that lets people know when I will be unavailable, whether I will be checking email intermittently or if I am not going to be available at all. And then, based on who you are, I let you know when to expect a response.

I find that creating that autoresponder with all of those details helps set expectations from when people can expect to hear from you. Then you don’t return to five messages from the same person wondering why they haven’t heard from you yet. The sooner that you recognize that you can’t respond to everyone at once, the easier it’s going to be to prioritize based on importance and urgency.” –– Anna Dearmon Kornick, time management coach and host of the “It’s About Time” podcast

“Organization for me starts before I even get back to the office. Typically, I take an extra day of vacation to get used to the fact that I have to return to work!

Once I’m there, I begin to make a list of tasks and I’m not overwhelming myself with everything that undoubtedly needs to get handled.

Next, I prioritize that list. Is this task past due? Does this task need to get done today? Can this particular task wait until another day? Now I have everything organized in my brain, it is written down, and I can finally start conquering the tasks at hand.” — Pamela A. Reed, time management coach and author of “Unfinished Business: How to Finish What You Start … Faster!”