Back from vacation and wrestling with e-mail

I’m back from my 5 days of camping and 3 days of working on my business “vacation” a.k.a. “staycation”.  A staycation is a vacation that is taken at home.

Although I wasn’t home the whole time, I do not consider any time off a vacation until I’ve left the province of Ontario.  But this time around I really needed some time away from my laptop.  When I was writing my book back in March and April, I didn’t take a day off at all.  In fact between February 19th and May something, I took one day off.  So when I booked this camping trip at the beginning of June, I could feel some stress begin to ease.  The sheer excitement of looking forward to a vacation, and yes, even a staycation, is enough to put a smile on our faces.  Have you noticed this happen to you too?

In the last few weeks I have had a number of “Recession: Media Myth or Reality?” conversations.  It seems everyone is talking about it in their newsletters, podcasts and in mastermind groups.  I will be sure to write a post about this, not to jump on the bandwagon, but to give you a couple of quotes from leaders in the industry about this dirty “R” word!

Another thing I have found interesting is the number of people who are talking about being more productive.  It’s like they are reading my brain or something!   I’ve got more on that with some tips in an upcoming post as well.

(Psssssssst…have you noticed how I’m blogging about what I’m going to blog about?  It’s a trick I’m using to keep myself accountable!)

So it’s the day after a vacation and what am I doing?  I’ve learned from previous “post-vacation-days”, not to schedule any meetings for 2 days after you are back to the office.  Why? There are a number of reasons.

1. You may still have your vacation brain on and you may not be ready to give your all to these meetings.
2. You have a ton of emails to go through.  If you fill your day with calls then you won’t get through to them for a number of days or burn yourself out your first day back from vacation.
3. You may have run out of groceries, or worse, coffee, and you just don’t have the energy and time to get through your day or even run to the grocery store to stock up on the essentials.

Another lesson I have learned is to let people know in your “out of office” message that you return to the office on X day but let them know it may take X+2 days to reply to their email.  Chances are you will get back to them the day you return or even the next day, but underpromising and overdelivering, even on emails, is a great business practise.
Speaking of emails…I’ve “shrunk” my inbox from 351 e-mails to 121!  Most of them were Google Alerts, newsletters, marketing emails, or “out of office” responses to my “out of office” response! Now that all the bulky emails have been moved out of my inbox and out of the way, it’s time to reply to all the emails that require my full attention.

If you like this post, please consider buying me a coffee.

Written by Sandra De Freitas

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