Vacations are good; however, most people don’t want to entertain the thoughts of the pile of work waiting for them upon their return to the office. Usually, the pressure of the stress that awaits you begins to dawn on you within the last two days before resumption. Also, depending on your role and responsibilities, the last few days of your vacation may be bugged by fighting how great the vacation felt and the anti-climax of ending it all to face reality. This need not be. You must figure out how best to manage the pile of work in such a way that returning to the office won’t be scary anymore. To avoid having piles of work waiting upon resumption to work, here’s how to put your best foot forward.
One of the best ways is to prepare ahead. If there are routine tasks that have to be done every time you resume, why don’t you carry them out before you leave for your vacation? Doing this will help to ease your first week back in the office. It also gives you enough room to gradually step up to your usual pace of work without feeling overwhelmed. In some cases where the routine tasks cannot be avoided, delegate them to someone else to manage shortly before the period for vacation. This will enable you observe any challenges of the fill-in and deal with them. By the time you’re back to work, the temporary team member should have been well acquainted with the task.
Some emergencies may need urgent attention, taking an hour or two out of twenty-four will help you have less serious matters treated way ahead of their deadlines. Looking through your emails at your spare time during your vacation, is a good way to reduce the workload that would have kept you uneasy upon your return. The best times of the day to do this without feeling cramped is shortly after you wake up in the morning or right before you sleep at night. Remember, whilst doing this to resist obliging requests.
This tip is best used to keep abreast of developments at work and through this, reduce the number of emails sent ‘just for your information’ on project developments and operations. Try to resist the urge to respond or acknowledge receipt of emails being sent to you; because once your colleagues are aware that emails are checked almost daily, they will squeeze in quick requests for your opinion, review or even edit and from a few minutes of checking emails, you may find yourself putting in a few hours of work.
Another way of getting off the anxieties that come with having a heap of work on your desk when you get back to work is to fully delegate to your subordinates. Earlier, we considered delegating routine tasks to other colleagues. This time, delegate more complex tasks and responsibilities completely are even much better. It saves the time of following up on the project or only shedding the simple tasks to more significant work that can chunk days and weeks off your schedule upon resumption. It is expected that as a manager or an executive, an effective sign of good leadership is that things do not deteriorate upon your absence or within the period of vacation. So, build a good working relationship in such a way that there is a chain of communication and clear understanding of what is expected of your colleagues in your absence.
This helps to ease your workload and lessens your worries while you’re away so that you can bounce back to work after a refreshing time off.
