The Return to Work After Vacation Tutorial
Before you return to your office job after a relaxing vacation, it helps to have a method for prioritizing your work. The following tutorial provides you four steps for organizing your assignments on your first day back from vacation.
The key to your successful return to work will be preparation, both mentally and physically You should get a good night’s sleep and have a mental plan for accomplishing as much work as possible on the first day after vacation. You will only fee I behind the eight ball if you fail to prioritize your work. Establishing a checklist of work priorities will help you to pace yourself to meet multiple deadlines.
1. Voicemail. Prioritizing work can be challenging, especially if you were out for a week or more. You will probably find there is too much work to get done in one day. Try breezing through all of your voice mails and tackling the most urgent ones first. That voicemail from your boss stating that you failed to meet a deadline before taking vacation might be a good place to begin.
2. Emails. If your company uses emails heavily, you can use the search feature and other sorting tools to identify emails that require urgent attention. You can read the remaining emails during slow times during your first week back. If there is no down time, you can do extra email review at home. Although it is not environmentally-friendly to print out emails, consider printing out the longer emails and the urgent emails that need to be added to your electronic task list. These emails can be filed away in the appropriate place when you are finished with them, or you can scan them and save them onto a disc before shredding them.
3. Reading Some assignments require background reading. If you have an important meeting coming up this week or a business trip to prepare for, be sure to block time for reading background materials. If you can’t find the time, put reading materials in your bag to bring home this week.
4. Deadlines. Your job will always have deadlines The short-term deadlines for your first day back will probably be longer than usual. Make a list of the deadlines you must get done today and complete them one by one. Also, decide if any deadlines beyond this week will require some of your work time during this work week. Although there are not enough hours in the 40-hour week to accomplish everything you’ve been assigned during your leave, you must prioritize and follow the daily checklists you will write on your first day back in the office.
