You probably know that it is important to take a break from work from time to time. If not, do your research and schedule one right now. On the other hand, if you’ve been following along with my posts, you might have found that making adjustments to the way you work can give you lots of headspace during your normal schedule to be able to do massive amounts of work. Having a great daily and weekly flow makes sure you’re not working from vacation to vacation.

However, it is good to completely disconnect and change venues from time to time. There are a couple of things to think about when trading your office for a nice, well deserved holiday.

• Be intentional about your vacation. Are you going to stay connected and read email from time to time? Or are you completely off the grid for a couple of weeks? It is important to decide this beforehand. You feel responsible and may want to check your email from time to time, but it can cause a lot of frustration (about stuff you can't really fix from the beach) while you really should be taking time to recharge.
• Communicate. Whatever you decide, make sure the people you work with directly know about this.
• Close open loops. For your colleagues, nothing is as annoying as finding you forgot to finish an important document, you didn’t send the email you promised to send, there is still some code or wireframes on your computer nobody has, et cetera. Be organized, especially in the final days before you take off. It might not be a bad idea to block off the last 2 or 3 days before you go to finish your work.
• Appoint someone to make decisions. If you’re in charge of a team or product, make sure people know who to ask if they have questions and who can decide how to move on. Actually, it is said that the performance of a team with a great manager should not be different with you there or you gone. Which means the team knows exactly what you’d choose and can act accordingly.

You deserve some time off to recharge. You most likely will return with new ideas, renewed energy and a fresh perspective. If you want to get the most out of your vacation, take some time to start planning how you’ll be leaving things behind.