The prospect of going back to work after a chocolate-and-rum-drenched
vacation is a tough thing to face. Nothing is worse than having a gravy
hangover while dealing with an inbox full of emails, and seriously, who is sending so many goddamned emails over
Christmas?
But fret not! As a master of keeping my job after all sorts of absences,
explained or otherwise, I've developed several tricks for just this situation.
Here then, for your job-keeping pleasure, is a system of battle-tested tips you
can use to get back into "work mode" after a long vacation.
1. This might sound insane, the kind of
suggestion that causes you to throw a thing of coffee completely through your
monitor. But
hear me out. Well, first clean up your monitor, then hear me out. When you
arrive to work early, there's usually no one else around, because arriving for
work early is monitor-wrecking insane. But that means you can get stuff done
without your colleagues giving you more work to do. Half the task of cleaning
off your desk is moving crap on to someone else's desk, and if you can get all
that done before people start shoveling it back to you, you can avoid that
frustrating sensation of trying to clear a big pile of work while that pile is
still growing. So go ahead and
roll into the office a couple hours early. It might hurt up front, but you will
benefit in the long run. More importantly, you'll be able to make a huge ass of
yourself lording it over everyone all day, which is, for me at least,
perpetually one of my New Year's Resolutions.
2.
The
reason coming back to work after a holiday is so depressing is because your
brain is suffering under the weight of the knowledge that everything that is
fun and good is behind you, and everything that is drudgery and whippings lies
ahead. The
simplest way to break out of this is to find something in the future that's
fun, something you can look forward too. This could be another vacation, but as
that's probably still months away, why not pick something simpler, like the
mini-vacation we get every day when we go home. What fun activity do you have
planned for tonight? Visualize that, and watch it give you the energy you need
to power through the day.
3.
OK,
so you made it into work early and spent a good half hour or so visualizing
leaving
4.
work. Now you're ready to start actual work.
Only to be stopped cold by a password prompt. It turns out that the part of
your brain responsible for remembering passwords was murdered by liqueur-filled
chocolates about two weeks ago. You can try to tackle this by thinking about it
really hard. Like, it ended with a 7, didn't it? But that
probably won't work so good. You might not even really consciously know your
password, it being sort of this muscle-memory thing you do when you sit in
front of a keyboard. Just stop thinking about it and start typing. And now
you're locked out. Well, that's OK. IT can reset it for you. When they get to
the office in an hour. Still, you can hardly be blamed if someone else's sloth
is slowing you down. You're the hero of this story, the diligent worker being
slowed down by parasites.
5.
You've Earned a Break. This is as good a time as any
to take a breather and catch up with your co-workers as they start trickling
in. After a holiday there's always a lot of chit-chat about what people did,
and what they ate, and what airlines they're no longer welcome on. These
conversations can keep a bit of that holiday cheer rolling, and that actually
boosts morale a bit. By participating in it, you are legally working!
6.
Do the Easy Stuff First
The chatter's done, your
password is reset, and it's time to do actual work, because it's now like 11 a.m. Time
to buckle up, then buckle down. To
start, I'd recommend knocking off the easy stuff first. This will give you a
nice sense of momentum that can carry you into the harder tasks. First, go
through your inbox and read all the emails that require no action on your part.
You know the ones. Corporate newsletters, joke threads, that kind of thing.
Nice, right? Avoid anything from your boss, or a client, or anyone that knows
your actual name and what you do. If the subject line of the email implies it
might contain work, just set that aside for now. So, what'd that do? Cleared
like half the emails out of your inbox, didn't it? Nice! And you did that in
like 10 minutes. At this pace, you'll be done with all your work by 11:20.
That's almost insultingly efficient, and you now run a serious risk of making
your co-workers look bad. In the interest of promoting a harmonious work
environment, it's time to throttle back a bit. You know, I bet a ton of
websites have put up great content for you to check out?
7.
Change Your Sitting Position
Now it's time to seriously get
some stuff done, because everyone's been watching you chuckle at your computer
in a way not normally associated with the act of performing grueling work, and
also because that inbox has been filling back up pretty quickly. It's no longer
time for jacking around. It's time to make a drastic change to your posture.
More than just a way to preserve your spine and scare away predators, your
posture can send subtle psychological signals to your brain that something is
different. You relax when your feet are up and are more alert when you're
standing, so let's use that to our advantage and get ourselves in an assertive,
"not jacking around anymore" posture. Place your feet flat on the
floor and lean forward slightly. Type something, doesn't matter what, as
hard and as fast as possible. Feels good, right? Like you're accomplishing
something vital.
8.
Put the Hard Stuff Into a List
OK, it's now like 1:30,
because it turns out that lunchtime also had some pretty good content. So,
carefully, carefully, open one of your hard emails and see what these
people are asking you to do. Oh shit, that's a lot. Don't panic,
though. What you're going to do now is take this tough, sweaty task and write
it on a piece of paper. That was easy! Do it with all the rest of your emails,
painstakingly copying all of the things you have to do on to this list, taking
breaks as necessary to check the web for new content.
9.
3 to 4 p.m.
No one works between 3 and 4
p.m.
10.
Visualize Leaving (While Leaving)
Announce loudly, like, bang
some spoons together first, that you got here early and are heading out for the
day. "Tough getting out from all this holiday backlog," you can add
while waving your to-do list around. "Might get some of this done on the
train."
Don't do any work on the
train. Do you see how easy that was? A whole day gone by, you lunging into work
mode and getting tons done without feeling depressed at all. Sure, you now
technically have more work to do than you started with and everyone is angry at
you. But by the time they get angry
enough to bring out the big whip, you'll hopefully have made it to, like,
Easter or something. Everyone will go on vacation for a few days, and when you
get back the cycle can begin again.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-ways-to-get-back-into-work-mode-after-holiday/
