Episode 112: What to Do the First 3 Days Back from Vacation (So You Don't Spiral)
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If you've ever walked back through your front door after a trip, bags still in hand, and immediately felt the weight of everything waiting for you, this episode is for you.
We're talking about the re-entry. That moment when real life comes rushing back in and all those good feelings from your time away evaporate faster than you can say vacation. The laundry, the emails, the groceries, the projects you left half-finished. And that voice in your head saying I'm so behind.
I don't want that for you. And honestly? Jumping straight back in isn't just hard - it's less effective too.
In this episode, I'm sharing the simple stair-step approach I use with my clients so that coming home from vacation, a work trip, or any time away doesn't feel like a cold plunge. Think of it less like snapping back to normal, and more like walking up a staircase one step at a time, at a pace your mind and body can actually handle.
If you've ever found yourself dreading time off because of how overwhelming the re-entry feels, this one's going to shift something for you.
Links and resources mentioned in this episode:
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode. Hello, how are you? Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I'm so excited to be here with you this week. As I mentioned in last week's episode, I have a couple of topics planned for us as many of us navigate the transition to summer schedules, what that looks like with work and kids and childcare and trips and having fun. So let's get right into it. You know that feeling when you get back from travel or a vacation, if that's what it is, where you want to hang on to the relaxation or the memories or the feelings that you had? I want to say that I fully recognize that relaxation is not always in the cards, that not all trips with kids are relaxing. Sometimes they are just as much work as staying home. But after you return, when you walk into the house, and especially when you get back to work following that time away, and you are confronted with real life again. I imagine walking in the door, dropping the many bags that I schlepped from the car into the house, and immediately seeing and thinking about the laundry that needs to be washed, the grocery order that needs to be placed, the emails that piled up while I was away, the schedule that needs to be looked at for next week, and the projects that you left in various states before you took off. All those good feelings go right out the window, and they are replaced with a thought or a series of thoughts about, "I have so much to do," or, "I'm so behind Today I want to outline a back to reality transition plan so that when you return from travel or vacation or time off, it doesn't feel like jumping into a cold plunge, but rather wading into the pool where your body has time to adjust to the temperature before you get all the way in I was talking with a client about this exact strategy the other week, and she said, "You need to do an episode about this on the podcast." I totally agreed, because we all navigate this. I'm thinking about it right now, of course, because where many of us are, it's summer, and there are summer trips and vacations. My husband is actually gone right now for a work conference. I know those maybe aren't as common in the summer, but they still happen. I personally am traveling more than I have in any summer that I can remember in recent years. So between , the vacations, the work trips, or even just being off due to illness or school holidays, there is a transition period when we come back to our, quote, unquote, "real life", there's a transition. But so many of you are jumping right in when what you really need to do, not just because it feels better, but also because it's more effective, is to ease back in So we all know how it goes, right? Life does not stop when you are away. Unless you have someone at home who is cleaning the house while you're gone, or ordering groceries to be there for your return, or someone who is painting that room or taking care of that project, it's all still there for you when you return. And the same is true at work. Unless someone's managing your emails or taking your meetings or owning your projects, it's there. Now, if you are good or practice delegating, hopefully you didn't need to check your emails or manage your team or pinch-hit on a project while you were out of the office. And if you are working through your vacation, we definitely need to talk. You do not have to work that way. I've helped so many clients take vacations where they never once pull out their work laptop or their email on their phone But regardless, when you return, there is this urge to want to make up for the time that you were away. Sometimes I hear women say, " I lost that time." And so what I see is a lot of women killing themselves to work ahead before they even leave, to do all of the things in advance to try to minimize this. And what happens is a lot of times they arrive on the trip or to the conference or wherever you're going already exhausted And then you return and you don't wanna waste any more time, and it feels like there's double the work, and maybe there is. So you jump right in and you work twice as hard. Maybe you feel like you're being super productive. You get in and you just do this huge email purge from all of the things that you missed while you were away, but at what cost? And then I wonder if that pace is really sustainable not to mention, what was the time away for if it feels like it got canceled out by the frantic pace both before you left and after you returned? It can get to the point, and maybe you've experienced this, where you kind of dread taking time off. Yes, you're supposed to look forward to and enjoy your vacations or your trips. A lot of places have, use it or lose it PTO But it can feel like more work than maybe it's worth. You dread the lead up to the time off, and you dread the re-entry point when you return. In fact, that's what my client brought to session a few weeks back that sparked this entire conversation. She hadn't even left on her trip yet, and she was already worrying in advance about how she was gonna get back to her regular fitness routine that was in such a good place, her meal planning routine that also was going really well, and how she was going to catch up on work and still keep the family and the house moving forward. Ugh. I want you to enjoy your time away. It serves such a valuable purpose. I don't want you to kill yourself getting ready to leave. I don't want you to have to worry that it'll be so hard on the re-entry side that maybe it won't even be worth it. Time away is worth it. So let's talk about making that re-entry easier so that you can get back to the routines that are working really well, so you cannot feel like you have to work twice as hard to get caught up I describe transitions before as looking like an umbrella, or we can picture transitions looking like an umbrella And I like that visual because of the, I keep making gestures, which I know you can't see through the podcast, but on either side of us when we have an umbrella, right, the umbrella extends out on either side to keep the rain away from our bodies, to send it off to the sides and to the front and the back. And when we think about transitions, it is so helpful to remember that they do extend. There is the lead up to the transition, the transition itself, which is where you are standing holding the umbrella handle, and then there's the transition on the other side. The transition doesn't just happen and the umbrella stops. It continues off to the other side so the rain can fall off far enough away from you. I still love that visual, but as we think about re-entry, I am picturing in this scenario and for this episode, stairs And I want you to picture stairs that first you climb down So you climb down the stairs toward your time away, toward your vacation, toward your trip That vacation itself is then at a landing And then you climb back up the stairs on the other side into daily life. So sort of a V or a U with a little bit of a landing in the middle. Hopefully you can picture that right now and the stair visual is important because we are taking those steps one at a time. We are not being like my son, who is a little monkey and likes to jump down multiple steps at a time. He is constantly jumping over three or four steps, skipping those at the end. We are not doing that. We are adults, and we have to take care of our bodies. We cannot be jumping. That's hard on our joints. So we are going to just climb one step at a time. We're gonna step down toward our vacation, transition into that trip and that time away, and then we are going to step our way back up into everyday life, into, quote-unquote, real life. It's not about jumping to the top where you were before, right back into emails, right back into the projects, right back into the daily routines and weekly rhythms. You will get back there, absolutely, but not all at once So if you can, I highly recommend scheduling in some buffer time between the trip or the vacation and going back to work, to school, or to camp. Maybe that looks like returning on a Saturday so you have a Sunday to take your first step up before you get back into your regular schedule. Maybe that looks like taking an extra day off on the tail end of your trip. Maybe it looks like if you have to go back to work, blocking your calendar so you're not jumping into a full day of meetings or appointments or clients And so we're gonna walk up these steps together in how I would recommend that you ease your way into the water instead of jumping in like a cold plunge. So that first step up after your trip is to start with the basics. So you need food to eat. Maybe that looks like a quick run to the store. Maybe you need to order some takeout. Maybe you want to... I don't know. After I travel, I often come home and I'm like, "Just give me a vegetable." Maybe it's just chopping up some vegetables or roasting some veggies. Get the basics. Maybe then that also looks like unpacking. If you unpack right away, which can be a great way to reset, right? You need to be able to move around your house. You need to be able to find what you need, so you can unpack. And potentially there's some laundry here. Doesn't mean to catch up on all the laundry. It's what do I need for this week to be clean? And take care of that. And then I highly recommend that this first step as a basic step is that you need some rest. Travel, being out of your normal routine can be tiring Many of you don't rest after trips because you think, "Well, I just had time off," or, "I just rested." Though, again, depending on what that time off looked like, you might actually be more tired. Traveling with kids can be exhausting, even if it is in an idyllic vacation-like setting. Traveling for work can be exhausting, having to be on at a conference or for meetings. Depending on what it is, you might be tired. And so can you have a little bit of veg time? Can you go to bed early? Can you take a nap? Can you put the kids in front of screens? That first step is to take care of just the basic needs and necessities now that you're home. That is really your only goal in the beginning. Then the next day, you take another step up, and this step is about whatever feels timely or pertinent to take care of. So this might be looking at the calendar for the week and noticing deadlines that are coming up, the camp form that needs to be completed before camp next week, the appointments that you have or the meetings that are gonna start filling up your time again. What do you need to do to prepare for those? Were there any urgent emails that came in that truly need your attention? If you are back at work at this point, who does truly need something from you, and who is just there asking you questions 'cause finally you've returned? This looks like maybe showing up for meetings if you have those, if you weren't able to block your calendar or your clients, doing what absolutely has to be done, not trying to do it all. This is not filing things. This is not cleaning out your inbox to inbox zero. This is scanning through all of the admin at home and at work and just the cream at the top that is truly urgent because it cannot wait. Everything else I'm going to encourage you to continue to wait on Then we're gonna take another step up on our next day, and we are going to start to reintroduce some of those regular rhythms and routines. So this client that I keep referencing, she had this really great exercise routine that was working really well. And so as she's easing back from her travel, this is not the first thing that we add back in, right? We focus on basic necessities and urgent things that need to get taken care of. But this is the third step, and we can choose one thing to do. If you're used to going to the gym or to your workout class three times a week, depending on where your return falls, maybe you go once that week. Maybe there's another routine that you have, like a yoga class or a daily walk or a daily briefing meeting with your colleague choose one of those to add back in here. Maybe you feel up for a little meal planning, right? That first day back, it was just about the necessities. You needed milk, you needed eggs, apples, oranges, pouches, Cheerios. I don't know, like the basics to get you through those first couple of days back. Well, now you can think a little bit more proactively and start to get back into maybe cooking a meal at home or packing your lunch How do we expand from just the basic necessities of, well, we have to have food for camp or for daycare tomorrow to, all right, let me think now a few steps ahead. Let me get in a walk. Let me go to yoga at the end of the week, and let me plan for that now. Start to reintroduce those weekly rhythms in a manageable way, knowing that the next week you can feel like you are back into the swing of things And then our last step up would be if you are feeling somewhat settled back in, if you are caught up a little bit on some rest, now you can start to look at and address and think about the next steps on those projects at home or at work. Your routines slowly start to move forward toward what you're used to. Sleep is settling in after the time change or just being out of routine. And now we can start to think about and pick back up what were the things that I was working on that I want to continue to work on and move forward, and what is my next step? Just because you walk in the door after your trip doesn't mean that everything snaps back into place or should snap back into place. It takes time. It takes more time than we think it should, and I want you to overestimate the amount of time you need to transition back into daily life, not just for you, but for your kids too. You are not behind. You took some time away. You traveled. You were out of the office. Just because you're back doesn't mean it has to immediately be back to the way it was. If anything, hopefully that time away gave you some perspective or some fresh energy or new motivation. Leverage that And in order to leverage that, those perspectives and shifts and energy need some space. Don't immediately get back into things before those changes have the time to shift things. Now, this may feel counter-culture in a way, depending on your work situation, your team, your, your work culture, and that's okay. You get to decide what this transition back looks like. You get to trust that the things are going to get done, that you are going to get back to your routines. But you are also the one that's going to have to hold that boundary Maybe adding in some buffer time to your return to real life could help you hold that boundary. Maybe setting up your out of office to tell a day or two later than when you actually return to be able to set that expectation with others. Maybe you do block your calendar for meetings that first day back, or maybe you hire a sitter or enlist some family help if that's an option while you unpack and rest a little bit. There are lots of creative ways to ease the path for yourself, but you are ultimately the one that has to want this slower transition and to hold the line around what you want So remember, you don't jump over the steps. You take them one at a time, one day at a time. Give yourself time to acclimate and you'll have more energy to sustain work and life than if you just jump right in and burn yourself out trying to do all of the things right away If you want help delegating, turning off work when you are out of the office, or navigating life's transitions, I would love to coach you. I have two openings right now to start yet this summer so we can navigate any transitions that you have this season, work on delegating, truly taking restful time away, and we'll be able to walk through the next transitions when the weather changes and the kids go back to school and we head into that end of year rush. If that sounds like something that you would like to explore, you can head to themothernurture.com/application to learn more, to answer a few questions, to ultimately see if you'd be a good fit All right, for all of your time away, your trips, your vacations, I hope that this stair-step method of easing your way back in is helpful, that you took something from this episode today. And , until next week, I hope you take care. I'll talk to you soon Thank you for listening and as always, for being a part of this working mom community. You can find everything related to this episode in the show notes at themothernurture.com/podcast, you can also find information about how I support working moms just like you through one-on-one, and group coaching, as well as access a number of resources and articles all on my website at themothernurture.com. I will see you again next week for another episode of the podcast.
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