Today I am going to continue my blog series on getting the most out of the summer vacation season.  While many people take time off during the summer, when kids are out of school, it can cause lots of unnecessary stress for folks that are “left behind” or in the time leading up to and right after vacation.

The last thing you want is to be so burnt out from preparing for vacation that you can’t enjoy the time that you have.  At the same time, if you are killing yourself immediately when you get back you can “use up” all the fuel that you built up while on vacation in record time.  No matter how much you love your job or feel fulfilled by your career, you still need breaks to recharge and refresh.  We only get so much time off and wasting it is such a shame.

In the last couple of posts I have shared some ideas that I have to help manage the pre and post vacation timeframe more effectively.  Today I am going to focus on things I recommend to do while on vacation.

I do not believe there is a one-size-fits-all solution for how you can enjoy and get the most out of vacation.  We are all different and therefore what works for us will be different.  I suggest you experiment and figure out what works for you.

For me, I am an early riser, and most of my family isn’t.  As a result, I will often get up early and check-in with emails and Teams before business hours even start.  I find that by quickly scanning through my emails I can make sure that there is nothing urgent in my inbox and then I can go about the rest of my day knowing that there are no fires burning.   This usually takes me ten minutes, unless there is an issue that I need to deal with (usually delegating it to someone who isn’t on vacation) so it doesn’t occupy much of my time or energy.

For some people I know even this brief check-in would break the flow of their time off.  If that is you, don’t do it.  Really, the most important thing that you need to do is figure out what you need to do to be fully present during the time you have with your family when you’re off. If you are constantly checking your phone or emails instead of being engaged with your family and/or friends you are wasting a very precious and limited resource, time with family and friends.

In addition to finding what works for you to be able to disconnect, make sure you figure out what you and your family like to do to rest and recharge.  For my family, spending 12 hours pounding through theme parks or water parks for a week are some of the best times that we have spent together.  I know some families would call that torture rather than vacation.

Whether it is theme parking, cruising, touring the world or just crashing on a lounger at the beach or a pool, figure out what activities give you the best return on time.

I think I have one more post in this series to get through everything that I wanted to cover, so I will see you back here next week to wrap it up.