It’s the 17th of January and I’ve just arrived back at work after a 3 and a half week holiday. Ok, a few of those days were spent with the family, drinking copious amounts of mulled wine and stuffing ourselves silly over the Christmas period, but 3 of those weeks were spent soaking up the sun rays, lounging on beaches and exploring Thailand’s National Park and islands. As you can probably imagine, coming back to normality, to the -5 degree temperatures, the congested roads and of course the office, were not things I was particularly looking forward to on the 18 hour flight home!
Let’s face it, after a well deserved, relaxing break, it’s not nice having to come back to work and set ourselves in that 9 to 5 mindset again. Even if we’ve not travelled all that far, simply stayed at home, decorated the spare bedroom and caught up on all the soaps, dragging ourselves out of bed in the morning on that first day back is, quite simply, hard work.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my job, but when it comes to the crunch, wouldn’t anyone rather sit on the beach sipping cocktails than sat at a desk guzzling cups of coffee to stay awake? Now, I’ve never been one to wallow in self pity, but sometimes we all get a bout of back to work blues. Which had me thinking, how do I go about beating these?
So, for all those suffering, here’s my step by step plan to beating the back to work blues. Enjoy!
Plan a holiday!
Well this has certainly worked for me!! I spent half an hour of my lunch looking for deals for a week long break in Croatia.
There's nothing like planning another holiday to get over one!
There’s no worse feeling than the feeling you have nothing to look forward to, especially after a wonderful and long holiday.
Set yourself goals
Work related goals, especially in recruitment, help to motivate us. Write a list of things you want to achieve over the coming year then, as and when you achieve them you can cross them off.
Set yourself some new goals!
Setting goals and then realising them helps to promote a great sense of achievement.
Prioritise what needs to be done. Sort out your emails and perhaps write a to-do list. Coming back into the office I’ve found that it feels like there’s a mountain of things in front of me that I need to deal with.
Organise yourself! There's nothing worse than coming back to a desk full of junk!
However, knowing that I don’t have to catch up in one day and that I can prioritise has helped me feel better about tackling all these jobs.
Seek out fresh challenges
Coming back to work you might feel stale in your position. Well, maybe it’s time to grab the bull by the horns! Do something that excites you, inside work and out. Talk to your boss about any training you could do or anything that could boost your skills. If you’re doing things that drive and motivate you, there’ll be little time to think about how bad it is to be back at work rather than sunning yourself or relaxing at home.
Seek out challenges that motivate and inspire you
The bottom line is this: Life is too short to hate going back to work. So, rather than sit moping at your desk, decide what really makes you tick and go out and get it!
What about you? How do you beat the back to work blues?
Red Recruitment to Recruitment is the leading recruitment to recruitment solution in the Midlands. We specialise in the placement of recruitment consultants, from graduate trainee through to director level.
