If you’re anything like we are, a vacation — no matter how restful or amazing the vacation itself is — is always preceded and followed by periods of extreme stress at the office.
With a holiday weekend coming up — to say nothing of summer vacations! — we thought we’d start a thread today on what tricks and tips you use to prepare your workload for a vacation, how you manage your workload while on vacation, and how you catch up, if at all. (Pictured: Palm tree, originally uploaded to Flickr by TheLizardQueen.)
For this author, before I leave on vacation is an intense time, even if it’s just a day or two out of the office — I generally try to avoid scheduling a lot of lunch dates, doctor’s appointments, or nights out in the weeks on either side of a vacation. I do my best to review the landscape of what needs to go out to my superiors, as well as what’s going to come in from those I manage, and leave time for a quick review in my schedule. (If that “you’re on the wrong path” discussion needs to be had, it’s much better to have it before the assignment sits on your desk for a week and a half while you snorkeled and drank coconut drinks.) I also try to make sure I know what I expect the landscape to look like when I return. In terms of getting my own work done, I find Leechblock is absolutely essential — there’s a “lockdown mode” that allows you to block a number of sites for a set period. (I like to set it for an hour and a half, but that’s me.) If there is midnight oil to be burned, Emergen-C
is my good (good) friend, as well as the other tips mentioned in the post on eating for super-long days. Finally, before I leave I do my best to put my work in neat piles and label them clearly — in case anyone I’m working with needs anything, they can find it easily. (Call this a lesson learned after an hour-long cross-continental phone call a few years ago trying to help my then-secretary ransack my office to find a certain document.)
While away — know your company’s policy on checking e-mail and voice messages. If you’re only required to check your e-mail once a day, set your Blackberry’s Auto On/Off settings to be more restrictive (like turning on at noon and shutting off at 5 — in whatever time zone you’re in) and don’t worry about it beyond that unless you have a really active project.
Readers, how about you? What are your tips for actually getting to that exciting vacation that you’ve been planning? Any horror stories about last-minute work and how you dealt with it? Any Blackberry rules — how often do you check?
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As 2009 draws to a close, inevitably many of you are preparing for vacation. As some of the weekend commenters noted, it is vitally important for one’s sanity that you take vacation regularly — but then, it’s often difficult if you’re particularly busy. (In fact, as we write this, a good friend has been up working for 36 hours straight — while on “vacation.”) So let’s talk about this. (Pictured: intense aruba sunset, originally uploaded to Flickr by atomicshark.)
First, a poll:
For our $.02, our goal has always been to use as much vacation time as possible, particularly since we’ve never worked in a job where vacation days “rolled over” or could be used in a subsequent year. Our preferred method of using as many vacation days as possible has been the 4-day weekend (or perhaps a 5-day weekend, such as around the 4th of July) — if you’re still there for some of the week, it seems a bit less like your vacation is disrupting the workflow. This, unfortunately, means that many hard-to-get-to locales are left unexplored — after all, if you’re only taking a 5-day vacation you can’t very well visit a place that takes a day just to get to — but at least means that you’ve had a break from work, mentally. It also avoids the heartbreak of planning a 10-day trip to an exciting spot only to have work interfere and prevent you from going. (Hint to all those finishing school and planning a trip before you start work — this is one of the only times you’ll have to travel for two weeks or more without guilt, so use them wisely. Similarly, honeymoons tend to be respected by superiors.) Last-minute jaunts can be a great way to make use of unexpected slow times at the office, also — we like the website Jauntsetter for last-minute jaunts for NYCers; most airlines also have e-mails listing weekend sales.
Another trick we’ve used is to plan the entire year’s vacations at once — in December, for example. If you have some time over the next week or so, we highly recommend looking at the entire calendar for 2010 now — figure out when major events are (a wedding in Miami, the last day of finals, your child’s spring break) and try to plan a few days’ worth of padding on either side of the events — reserving the space for your vacation now. Put reminders on your calendar far in advance so you’ll remember to buy the tickets and accommodations. (Be warned: a lot of major holidays are on the weekend this year — July 4th is a Sunday, Christmas and New Year’s are on a Saturday — which inevitably will mean 2010 will be particularly hard to plan.)
Readers, what are your thoughts about vacations? What tricks have you developed to ensure you get yours?
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