5 Ways to Beat Post-Vacation Blues and Get Back into Work Mode

Yes. We’re here again, back in our cubicles and staring blankly at the 100+ emails that have flooded our inbox for over the long weekend while we were binge watching Stranger Things and getting a bit fatter over the holiday. Hate to break it to you, but vacation’s over and those deadlines aren’t going to magically finish by themselves.

When you add eating a lot of food, traveling, and lack of sleep after partying till dawn into the mix, it’s nearly impossible to get back to work with guns blazing. Let’s take it little by little and follow these easy steps to get yourself back into productivity mode, and hopefully come out victorious by the end of the week.

1. Get into the right mindset

You may not realize it but your mind is very powerful. You have the potential to actually convince it that you’re feeling productive, even though you’re definitely not in that state of mind yet. But yes, you can trick it like that so you could jump-start yourself back into being lean mean working machine. So, try to think about a time when your productivity levels were high and how that made you feel, then visualize that good feeling and make it happen.

2. Make a list

Not a mental list, but a written list of all the things you need to get done and catch up on. Ideally, you should have written this before you left for vacation, but if you didn’t do that because you were too excited to head home for the holidays, you could start doing it now. Got the list ready? Good. Now you can start ticking things off throughout the day or week, while purposely boasting some of your awesome vacation stories with colleagues. Slow and steady acclimation is the way to go.

3. Relevance is key

You’re probably overwhelmed like me when I opened my inbox yesterday. But when I deleted or moved those useless updates and subscription emails, I was ready to dive into the deep of sea very important stuff. Jot down on your to-do list important emails and requests that need moving so you’ll know what’s urgent and what you can mark for later.

Tip: If you have an out of office reply going on, leave it for a few more days until you can catch up on things.

4. Be ambitious

Post-holiday resolutions are good if you actually have a plan on doing them. Let’s call them “intention setting” to make it different this time. Picture yourself and your career. What would you like to achieve this year? Have your priorities changed over that short time away? What things should you do differently this year to grow in your career? Write it down (we like to write things down if you haven’t noticed it yet). With your career goals on paper, you’ll have something to look forward to in the coming months, but more importantly, it will help spring you back into action as soon as possible.

5. Amp up with good music

There’s no better way to get back into work mode than immersing yourself to some good music. Do you notice that listening to some beats while working out pushes you to run just a little bit farther and faster? You can also do the same in terms of trying to get your mood back into being productive in the office. So, get those earphones ready and listen to these awesome beats from Spotify, and start hustling!

Remember that the holiday helped recharge your mind, body and spirit. Keep your positive thoughts flowing and sooner or later, you’ll find that by mid-week, that old familiar work rhythm will naturally return, which means you have already survived the post-holiday sluggishness.

Maybe it’s more than just the vacation blues. Sign up on Kalibrr today and make a change in your career.

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