Summer is a vacation season, welcome but with a slight aftertaste of bitterness. The bitterness, as a rule, is the taste of "burned" deadlines, feet worn out before vacation from the jogging, unfinished or made in a hurry "by live thread" reports-documents-presentations, write paper. And then there are the piles of cases accumulated during the vacation that your colleagues could not or would not do, and overtime, which "drown" the feeling of relaxation accumulated during the vacation.

How, if not to get rid of these "vacation sins", then to minimize their corrosive influence?

Of course, it is important to remember in advance that you have a vacation, and not try to "cram what you can't cram" - for example, to do for three days the number of things that normally take a week. On the contrary, you should give yourself three to five working days to spare - as a rule, there are a large number of colleagues who, in spite of all your warnings, will rush in three days with an unscheduled pile of work and will not want to accept your refusal. As a rule, you can't get away with all this hassle, and you'll have to do at least a "burning minor," especially if your immediate supervisor is dumping this turnover on you. So...

Rule number one: make time and effort

To do all the pre-holiday business qualitatively during working hours, and do not take with them in vacation "unfinished" or a sense of shame for poor quality work done in a hurry. And, depending on your own softness and persistence of colleagues, add a "correction factor" for all this trouble.

Rule number two: delegate tasks to colleagues

Putting aside false shame. And not only the "leftovers", but also to replace yourself for the period of vacation - at least on the most critical and urgent issues. It is also important not to put it off until the last day before the vacation and look for a "victim" at random. And it is desirable to do it not only in the format of a friendly request, but also with the division of responsibility for the deed or omission of the deed. So that after a vacation you do not come across a colleague with a bewildered shrug in response to the question - "And why is this not done? Well, he couldn't do it, that's all. Or he didn't want to. When there is no responsibility, idleness is especially unpunished.

Rule three: Plan everything and make a proper list

We all love to write lists, not on paper / smartphones, so in his head. To make sure we don't miss anything, to remind ourselves. Pre-holiday lists often have a Torah length and a minor intonation. As soon as you begin to list all the things that need to do, what not to forget, with whom to communicate, from whom to receive what to give - involuntarily thought occurs to me: why not cancel the vacation?

But all is not so hopeless. If you correctly organize a list of things to do and how to do it, leaving the vacation does not feel like jumping into a river of hungry crocodiles. The main mistake we make when writing such a list - we allocate little time and in a hurry write everything that comes to mind. The result is an incomprehensible "sausage" in which global projects and small things, urgent, important and hopeless, are mixed up. We write next to the things that need to be done, since after vacation it has already come their turn, and the things that we simply put off for "after vacation" for more than one time. No wonder that when we then look through all of this "storybook", we come to a silent horror, and the hands descend by themselves. And every time we review this endless list, the eye "clings" to more and more new tasks, promising more and more enormous problems. Sometimes we do not even understand or can not remember what it means sacred - "Sam-report" or "Ann-debtor. Two weeks ago, before the vacation, we implied something, but the telegraphic writing style has "washed the meaning" out of what we wrote. Or we lost the nuance - for example, the report should not be an Excel spreadsheet, but a presentation slide for the CFO. And our notes don't say a word about that.

We need to make records in an orderly fashion. If it is easier and clearer for someone to work with such a "ribbon", no problem. But it seems to me a more productive approach when records are not written "in one column", and sorted by their volume, urgency and priority. Optimally, when the matter is formulated as a project and its implementation step (or final goal). If there is a deadline, it is better to make (or duplicate) such an entry in the calendar, so as not to get lost in the post-award chaos. It's a good idea to write it down - and make a presentation slide for the CFO on the receivables you received from Luda. This is important, so you won't wonder why I needed that damned account receivable. Or duplicate - from whom else you can get the information you need.

The good news is that not all records need to be done at all or done urgently. There is an option to keep the sent data until a certain time, just take note, transform, but when a certain set of documents is reached. Or just sort, replace with newer versions and delete. Accordingly, in this category, too, you need to sort your records, and correctly.

But even properly compiled records should not be left without regular attention - if you forget about properly formatted cases and projects, they will not make it on their own. So allotting half an hour on the first vacation day for an express review and an hour or two in the first week to update the list of tasks and statuses on them is also a must. Chaos here can get expensive. So despite freshly accumulated vacation to-do's and eager colleagues, clients, and partners, you need to approach the review and prioritization of cases in a measured way. Proper sorting of cases will help to cope with the "ninth wave" of accumulated and postponed problems more quickly and efficiently. However, it is more expensive to relax after the vacation: continuing to properly arrange and systematically control current affairs means not only increasing your productivity, but also organizing yourself so that the next vacation will not be so scary and dangerous.