20 Essential Tips for Returning to Work after a Holiday

It doesn’t have to suck.

Reviewed by Chris Leitch

Tips for a Stress-Free Return to Work after a Holiday

The holidays are a relaxing and joyful time. The festive dinners, perhaps accompanied by alcohol, celebratory gatherings with friends and family, and days on end wearing nothing but stretchy pants, are enough to make us forget what it’s like to have a job at all.

Going back to work after this holiday bliss to productive work can be a jarring transition. Happily, with the holidays approaching, we’ve got you covered. Here are some tips — from the night before to the end of your first day back — to help make your re-entry to work less painful and more productive.

1. Check emails the night before (maybe!)

There are two distinct schools of thought on this.

Some people find it helpful to screen their emails the evening before — both to ease their evening-before peace of mind, and also improve their first-day-back productivity. Other people feel that the evening before their first day back is still part of their holiday time, and decide against checking their inbox.

Find the strategy that works best for you, and stick to it with intention.

2. Plan ahead for a good morning

If you’ve been living in your PJs for a week or two, a morning rush to work can get your day off on entirely the wrong foot.

Make your morning easier by putting together a go bag. Prepare your lunch and snacks, set out the clothes you’ll wear, and gather up whatever work you may have brought home with you.

All these things will make your morning run smoothly and will improve your performance on your first day back after Christmas.

3. Get a good night’s sleep

There’s an abundance of research showing that focus and performance drop dramatically with lost sleep, and that sleep deprivation can have disastrous effects on your physical health as well.

Turn off any screens in good time, use relaxation strategies that work for you, and go to bed early to ensure you’ll wake up feeling rested and ready.

4. Get organized

If you left your desk in a state of disarray (we won’t judge — most of us don’t have time to organize our desks on the last day before the holidays), set yourself up for success by tidying up before you start working on anything.

Straighten up any unnecessary piles of paper and folders, and set them aside for later. Clearing your clutter clears your mind and, in turn, means you’ll be able to manage your time without being distracted by the mess.

5. Set goals and write them down

On your return to work after the holidays, it’s especially important to set goals and hold yourself accountable for reaching them. The number and type of goals you set will depend entirely on your work, but keep them achievable so you can reward yourself with a sense of accomplishment.

Write the most important things down, and cross them off as you get them finished. Stick with one goal until it’s finished — multitasking may seem more productive but, in fact, the reverse is true.

6. Check in with work social media feeds

During one of your breaks from work, check in with your work-related social media feeds (if you use them to stay current on news and developments in your line of work and industry).

Doing this intentionally during a break will help you resist the temptation to check in mindlessly during the day — particularly in a moment when your mind is seeking a fun distraction from work.

7. After checking, turn all social media off

Keep your phone on silent with the screen down so you won’t be distracted by notifications and alerts throughout the day.

Social media is the easiest and most tempting way to spend time doing anything other than work. Turn off the distractions so you won’t let yourself get pulled down that rabbit hole.

8. Consider a “delay” message

If you’re spending your first day back clearing a backlog, your response time to new messages may be slower. Consider setting up an auto-response to new emails committing to a reply shortly — for example, within 24 hours.

This quick and easy step gives you the permission to focus on catching up, without the distracting pressure to read and reply to emails right away. You can still respond to critical and time-sensitive emails when you see them during a scheduled email check, which we’ll cover below.

9. Eat well

No matter how busy you are, resist the temptation to work through lunch. The benefit of any small amount of time you save will be far outweighed by a drop in your cognitive abilities.

When you take breaks during the day, top up your tank with healthy snacks. To stay focused and productive, your brain needs the energy that food provides. In particular, choose foods that will keep your body and brain running steadily without energy spikes and slumps.

10. Drink lots of water

Your brain also needs water to be at its best — after all, your brain is ¾ water! Just a 4% drop in hydration can result in a productivity drop of up to 50%.

Bring a water bottle with you to work, and keep it in a prominently visible spot in your workspace to remind yourself to drink regularly throughout the day.

11. Triage your inbox

Some emails in your inbox will probably need relatively immediate attention. For others, action might be required, but it can wait until later. Many, almost certainly, are just FYI emails that require no action but that you may need to review at some point. And of course, there are bound to be many that require no action or review at all.

As quickly as you can, cut down on the size of your inbox by triaging your emails — perhaps organizing them into folders that represent the action you need (or don’t need) to take.

12. Delete (or archive) ruthlessly

If your inbox looks anything like ours, it collects emails that are entirely unnecessary. Mailing lists that we signed up for (or, in some cases, didn’t), emails that we were copied in on for some inscrutable reason, jokes and links to funny videos…

At other times of the year, there may be time to sift through these when we need a distraction. Now is not the time. Be ruthless and delete as many of these irrelevant messages as you can — or at least archive them to look at later. Most importantly, get them out of your inbox: out of sight is out of mind.

13. Schedule new email checks

Since you’ve set an auto-response letting people know there might be a delay with your reply (you did that, right?), keep your focus on the goals you’ve set by allowing new emails to arrive without immediately reading them.

Set aside some time — perhaps just before or just after one of your planned breaks — to catch up on emails that have just arrived, and triage them in the same way as you did the others.

It’s easy to fall into the habit of responding to an email just because it’s there. Keep prioritizing them to avoid this productivity drain and to remain focused.

14. Plan breaks

Human brains simply cannot focus effectively for long periods of time without a break.

The Pomodoro technique provides a healthy structure for you to concentrate on the tasks at hand for a sustainable amount of time, and then to give your brain the breathing space it needs to regroup for the next session.

Using this technique, work for 25 minutes at a time, with a 5-minute break after each work period. After you’ve completed 4 of these 25-minute sessions, give yourself a longer break — 15–30 minutes — to fully recharge your batteries.

15. Reconnect with people — intelligently

Assuming that you like the people that you work with as much as we do, the first day back can be a lot of fun. You haven’t seen these folks for a week or so, everyone’s had a lot of fun while away, and it’s nice to catch up on the stories of holiday merriment.

At the risk of being a post-holiday Grinch, these conversations can be the biggest drag on time and productivity during the first day back.

Do plan to reconnect with the people you like and enjoy working with. Just do it during the breaks you’ve planned for yourself, and remember to be respectful of their time and focus!

16. Get up from your chair

When it’s time to work after a vacation, your body will have probably “forgotten” what it’s like to sit in front of a screen for eight hours a day.

Standing up and doing some simple stretches or walking to the watercooler and back is, therefore, a great way to give your eyes a break from your monitor and get your blood flowing. Aim to do this several times throughout the day, as it can improve your alertness, lower your stress levels and decrease your risk of injury when practiced often.

If you can, walk while taking calls or discussing matters with colleagues, and try to stand while presenting during meetings. All these little things will add up, effectively reducing the amount of hours you spend sitting down each day.

17. Schedule in meetings

Normally, most of us will groan and complain whenever there’s a meeting coming up. That’s because of how much they tend to drag on, costing us precious time for what could have just been said in an email.

When you’re just returning from vacation, however, and looking for ways to slowly ease back into work, meetings can be a blessing in disguise.

Until you find your rhythm and get your productivity in full swing, why not catch up with colleagues on upcoming projects and refresh your memory on pending ones that have sat on your list since before the holidays? Of course, you’ll get your urgent tasks done first, and use these meetings as a chance to slow down a little.

18. Give yourself time to adjust

When you’ve only just gotten back after a long break, try not to be too quick to jump to conclusions.

Though you might feel like blurting out “I’ve truly gone stupid” or “I’ve forgotten everything” as you stare at your screen with glazed-over eyes, chances are that your ability and intelligence have not suffered one bit. You just need some time to readjust, which is perfectly normal.

For the first couple of days especially, give your mind and body time to catch up with the changes in your environment and routine. And, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, remind yourself that this too shall pass!

19. Implement your New Year’s resolutions

Returning to work after a vacation can seem more doable (and even exciting!) when you look at certain things through a new pair of eyes. For example, if it’s your first days back at work after Christmas, why not start implementing your New Year’s resolutions right away?

Let’s say that one of your career-related resolutions this year was to add a “deskercise” routine to your workweek. Setting a reminder for it and actually doing it can give you a big sense of accomplishment by the end of the day: you’ll be in the process of forming a great new habit!

The same goes for any type of goal you’ve set for yourself, like avoiding coffee after lunch and practicing daily affirmations.

20. Make use of buffer days

As you can’t go back in time and request an additional day off, keep this bit of advice in mind for future reference! Next time, before you leave for vacation, request an extra day of leave, especially if you know that your schedule will otherwise be completely packed until your final evening before returning to work.

This is what’s known as a buffer day: it’s a day that provides a chance to transition from a festive mood to a “back to reality” mindset.

During these 24 hours, you can take care of chores such as doing laundry and tidying up your house (you won’t want to deal with these when you return home on your first day of work!), and even quickly read through your work emails and to-do lists, to remind yourself what you were doing before the break. When you do this, returning to work won’t be as big of a shock!

Final thoughts

Holiday breaks are an important part of your working year. No matter how much we love our jobs, we all need time away from them from time to time.

Holidays give us the quality time we need with loved ones, and the time our brains require to recharge and keep us performing at our best while feeling refreshed. After a vacation, we can return to our jobs feeling stress-free and be ready to take on the challenges we face each day.

Your first few days back in the office after a holiday can be less frantic and more productive if you use these tips to plan ahead and follow through. By the time your first week back comes to an end, you’ll almost certainly feel back in the groove and routine of work.

Do you find it difficult returning to work after some time off? What do you do that helps ease you back into the daily grind? Let us know in the comments below!

Originally published on July 10, 2017. Updated by Electra Michaelidou.