Coming back to your first day on the job after a trip can bring on a serious case of the blues. The vast majority of us work to travel and in between every backpacking trip to Thailand or Argentina requires hours at an office, waiting tables, or whatever else we can do to earn money.
Keeping in mind that we’ll all be inevitably returning to work, there are 5 ways you can prepare yourself and make the transition to ‘regular life’ a bit easier on yourself.
- Arrive A Day Early – Many people jump right in back to their jobs the next they return home from a vacation. Being tired and jet lagged not only makes your perceive time to slow down and reduce your productivity, but it can cause you to make opposite decisions. Take an extra day of vacation (or ‘staycation‘) or cut a trip 1 day short to allow your body and mind to recuperate, otherwise you’ll be hating life, unproductive, while running the risk of getting sick and possibly wasting vacation hours.
- Shift Your Body Clock 3 Days Before Coming Home – Use peanuts to shift your body clock to your home timezone before you get back home. Also, on your flight back drink plenty of red wine – both to knock you out (sticking to your sleep schedule) and to also prevent D.V.T blood clots.
- Take A Lunch Break – Workers who take at least 30 minutes of lunch away from their desks actually improve their productivity. Sitting in front of a computer while you eat forces you to multitask, reading emails, your Facebook, and instant messaging, keeping your brain from taking a break. Your brain actually processes a lot of information as you day dream – and you’ll have plenty of vacation memories to reminisce over.
- Contact Your Boss And Get Your First Day Prepared – There’s nothing worse than returning back to work and having nothing to do. Sitting around all day looking or waiting for something to do can bring the day to a screeching halt. Having an idea and basic first-day itinerary will help your first workday fly by.
- Begin Planning Your Next Trip – Start calculating your vacation hours and begin planning your next trip. Figure out where you want to go and how much time you’ll need and start crunching numbers. Schedule out how long it will take you to save up enough money using the POT rule and start planning! Now you have something to look forward to and remember to keep telling yourself that every hour spent working is another hour closer to your next trip!
I look at working as a vacation from vacationing – it’s what funds our trips and we’ve got to use our jobs to set up our next trip. Accumulate your vacation time wisely and use your time off when you want it, not when you need it.
How do transition back to your job when you return home from an amazing trip or vacation? I’m sure many of you have creative ways of getting back in the swing of working. I look forward to reading your comments.
[photo by: peminumkopi]
