I was hanging out on the Together Forever private Facebook group this week (Are you in the group? If you have ever attended any event of ours, you can join us for some behind-the-scenes Together topics/gossip/tips!), and I asked if anyone had any holiday rituals or tips related to Togetherness. Eric Rosecrants (a former teacher, school leader, ops director, and now consultant) dropped a nugget that caused the entire chat to look up and ask for more details. Eric said, “Write yourself your own Vacation Return Memo to come back to in the New Year. It makes scrubbing back in that much easier post holidays!” As many of us get ready to shut down for a couple of weeks, this could be just the thing that helps us all get some true rest and rejuvenation, PLUS not have the worst-ever case of the Sunday Scaries when the break is ending!
Eric offered a bit more detail about how he sets up his Vacation Return Memo; essentially it’s a table he creates with the following columns:
1) Topic. This is usually by client and/or major pillar of work.
2) Current Status. This captures high level priorities and pieces of intel that will help me scrub back in easier – what we’ve been talking about, what we last delivered, what concerns we might not have mitigated/open issues, etc.
3) Return Notes. This is what I plan to do when I return, the priorities and next steps I need to dig into – so, it’s essentially what I would have captured in a typical Meeting with Myself but just more forward thinking.
I then use those columns to create rows for each of my major areas of work — and then just have a random row at the end for admin stuff.
We sketched out a version of this for you to download here.
Eric says, “The first piece of advice I’d give someone: Create your template and have it open before you begin shutting down for any holiday disconnect – it’s helpful to have the “dumping” ground before you start closing up shop. As you start to close out open documents, sort through your inbox, have your final meetings with the teams/colleagues, you can then capture those notes as you go.”
He also notes one more tip that makes re-entry easier, “One key element of this is I typically have a BUNCH of things open on my desktop and browser day-to-day – as I close those on my last day in the office, I evaluate and determine if I will want that on my radar when I’m back. If so, I add these links to my Vacation Return Memo as well. When I log back in, I literally just click all the links and I’m back in business.”
Brilliant, Eric, brilliant! Anyone else going to try this? I’m in! I could see this being super helpful for writing projects I’m partially through, notes I need to summarize, and more. And, this could be useful not just for the December holidays, but any time you are away from work for a week or more.
PS We have more ideas on planning for vacation and re-entry here, here, and here.
