Taking time to relax and rejuvenate is important for your mental wellbeing and physical health. Summer vacations allow us to refresh and rewind, spend time with family and friends, or just enjoy a good book in quiet solitude, far from the reach of email and cell phone calls. However, returning to work after an extended break can be challenging. All those work-related emails you didn’t read? They’ll be waiting for you. More than likely, you’ll need to spend a few days, even weeks, playing catchup to make up for those wonderful days off you so enjoyed.

So how do you make returning to work less stressful? The following tips will help ensure you reenter your work routine feeling both positive and productive.

Planning Ahead For Your Return

The first few days back from vacation are the hardest, but you can make things easier on yourself by planning ahead for your return.

Before you leave for your vacation, change your voicemail message to say you are out of town and specify the date you will be back in the office. You’ll avoid getting a series of increasingly irritated messages from people who expected you to return their call already. Set up an automatic, out-of-office response for your email. Create one response for internal emails, and a separate reply for external contacts. Both replies should include the contact information for whoever will be handling urgent matters in your absence.

It’s a good idea to create a detailed check-list of everything pending prior to your vacation, and tasks needed to be completed in your absence. This will ease the havoc your coworkers will face taking over your projects, and it will help you remember the pending items and follow progress on the completed ones upon your return.

Your coworkers may have been pulling double duty in your absence, so be sure to tell them before you leave and when you return how much you appreciate their help. Consider bringing in a small token of your gratitude. This could be an inexpensive souvenir, or a tasty local specialty from wherever you traveled for the team to share. Doing so is a simple way to show how much you value each member of your team.

Take Care of Yourself

It can be tempting to stay glued to your desk in an effort to catch up on your work. Instead, take time to eat a proper lunch away from your desk, even if it’s quick. Eating healthy will provide much-needed energy and help you stay focused. Be sure to drink plenty of water and not overload yourself on caffeine. Too much caffeine will make you feel jittery and on-edge, and may interfere with your ability to concentrate.

Try not to schedule any meetings or big presentations for your first day back in the office. Instead, use that time to get up-to-date on emails and assess the things you need to catch up on. Prioritize those tasks. Tackle items one at a time, and don’t worry about the length of the list. Street maps You might need to stay after hours to catch up on things during that first week, but try not to make a habit out of it. Getting to work on time and leaving on time will allow you to rewind and maintain your productivity in the long-run.

Remember, when you take care of yourself, you work more efficiently, and miss fewer days due to illness, which in turn benefits your employer and everyone on your team.

Attitude is Everything

With the right mindset and a little bit of advance planning, you will return from vacation refreshed, recharged and ready to get to work.

Primary Services has been helping create success stories for clients and job seekers since 1988. Please contact us for more tips about success in the workplace, as well as job opportunities available at some of the best companies in the US. We look forward to working with you!