Summer is the time of year for vacations, barbecues, lazy days in the sun, and friendly gatherings.When you are fortunate enough to take time off from your current job, or if putting a temporary halt to your active jobs search, you want to come back to real life from vacation without losing your motivation and focus. Here are three tips to help you achieve that.
1. Organize and clean before you go.
That sense of seeing your place with fresh eyes becomes a pretty horrible experience when you come back to find it in a real mess. Piles of folders, mail spilling out of your inbox, last week’s four used coffee cups, and who knows what in that bowl you forgot to wash. Coming home to organization as opposed to chaos can ease you back into a pleasant working environment when you return.
2. Keep in touch.
When you visit friends on vacation, your zest for life and your quest for happiness is ignited. In order to sustain that motivation, it is imperative keep in touch with friends and family and place importance doing so before life gets in the way and the intention to remain focused fizzles away. If you have been visiting with friends and had a ball, it does not take a lot of effort to stay in touch.
3. Change things up.
Routine is familiar, safe, and comforting, but it can become mondain and invite you to fall into a slump. Upon returning from vacation, change things up. Maybe take a new route to work, listen to an audiobook instead of the radio, set your alarm 15 minutes earlier to stretch or meditate, go talk with a colleague instead of emailing, or look for a new way to manage your to-do list. Changing things up is how you keep things fresh.