4x How to let go of your work on vacation

This post was scheduled for Saturday, but then I celebrated the summer vacation with my girls at the beach of Wijk aan Zee. So I never got around to writing this post. In short, I am the perfect person to write this piece for you.

1. Forget your laptop

Get rid of that thing. It's heavy, it's dangerous (what if something happens to it), and before you know it, you're spending the whole vacation with your screen on your lap. Read a book. You know, on old-fashioned paper. Like this one, this are the suggestions from Marion Pauw.

2. Leave group chats

This way, you never really let go at home and are stuck in all sorts of home, garden, and kitchen messages from neighbors, friends, class moms, and colleagues. Normally quite cozy (well, almost always), but use the vacation to really disconnect. Send them a message and say that you're leaving the group for a while. It has nothing to do with them, but you're a WhatsApp junkie and want to go through a digital detox. After the vacation, you'll be back wagging your tail on the doorstep, but not right now.

3. Set an out of office

I'm not very good at setting out of offices. Read here how I came up with a great plan together with Jet and instead of sending an automatic reply when someone emailed me, I spammed everyone who had ever emailed me with my yay-I'm-sipping-a-cocktail-on-a-terrace reply. And if you had sent me a hundred emails, you received that sunny message on every email. That's why I'm not so confident anymore, but an out of office is really a good idea. People understand that you don't reply immediately. They usually do, that's how conditioned we've become. You show that you have a life outside of work too, and if you happen to reply (because your laptop may be at home, but you definitely have your phone with you), the other person feels extra special.

4. Make sure you finish everything

I'm always inclined to handle this and that on the way. I'll write that piece on vacation or I'll just email it. Don't do it. Schedule two evenings before your vacation for your work. Wrap everything up, make it late, but make sure you can dramatically close that laptop and really, really, really have a vacation. Work is work, vacation is now.

Have fun!