No more stress after holidays!

Holidays are like oxigen, necessary to survive our working life. However the days before and after holidays are always a nightmare.

A couple of days off attached to Easter holidays and my inbox is stuck with an infinite number of emails and over 40MB of attachments which costed me 30 minutes of swearing! This is the opposite of the downshifting lifestyle I'm aiming at. And this happens to all of us, really, with the effect of losing the "holiday mood" much earlier then expected!

Here is what I will do the next time to avoid all this.

I will do anything to prevent this madness by:

• not fixing any meetings on the day of my return - I need time to catch up with emails, get back to a working mindset and organize my work.
• setting a 1-day later return date in the out-of-office message - So that people do not expect me to be in the office and hopefully are busy with someone else.
• before holidays book a meeting room for the day I'm back - and lock myself in until I'm done with emails.

Prevention is key!

If you guys have more suggestions just post a comment and let me know.