5 tips for regaining focus at work after the holidays

Now that the holidays are over and it’s time to go back to work, you may be finding it difficult to get back into routine. After spending a week or two having fun on vacation or relaxing with your family, it’s common to get the post-vacation blues at the prospect of going back to work. How do you overcome the doldrums and transition back to ordinary life? Forbes offers five tips to help you shake off your holiday jetlag and get back into the swing of things.

Tips for regaining focus after vacation

#1: Focus on the big picture

After a fun, relaxing vacation, it might be hard to muster up the desire to go back to work. To help with this, think about why you go to work every day in the first place. Simon Sinek, author of “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action,” suggests that you take time regularly to remind yourself of why you come into work. Post-vacation is a great time to recall the purpose of what you do and why it matters. Having this clarity can help you shake off the wish for an even longer vacation.

#2: Build relationships

Once you’re back in the office, make time to reconnect with your coworkers, colleagues, and patients. Chances are you’re already planning on catching up with others once you return and figuring out what happened while you were gone and what needs to be addressed. In addition, consider inviting them to try something new for lunch with you, or finding other opportunities to build warmer relationships. This will give you something to look forward to as you get back into routine after a vacation and make work fun.

#3: Get creative

You’ll probably have a lot of work to catch up on once you come back from your time away. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with it all, especially if you don’t have a good strategy for organizing it. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to sit down on your first day back and figure out which tasks have top priority, so you can handle those tasks first. In doing those tasks, look for places to be creative! Explore new ways to increase efficiency and knock items off your to-do list. Making this a self-assigned challenge can increase your motivation and help your productivity and focus during your first days back at work.

#4: Take care of your mental health

It’s always important to practice good self-care, but it’s especially important after returning from a vacation. If you don’t, you risk feeling demotivated and mentally exhausted in the days after your return. Make time to schedule in lunch, exercise, take walks in nature, or do other small pick-me-ups to keep you energized. In addition, it may be tempting to overwork yourself to catch up faster from your time away, but keeping your work-life balance is crucial for your mental health.

#5: Be present

After you’ve come back from vacation, don’t entertain daydreams of how much you’d rather be there than back at work. Doing so will only increase your post-holiday blues and make it harder to get back into routine. Instead, let your trip become a happy memory and focus on your present work and your future career goals.

Although post-holiday blues are common, they’re usually short-lived. At some point, you may be planning another vacation and having that to look forward to. In the meantime, following Forbes’s tips will help you get back to your normal productivity at work and transition back to routine in no time.