3 Things Every Digital Marketer MUST Do When They Return From Vacation

 Written by Travis Pryor, Digital Account Strategist

Vacation is amazing. Vacation is important. Don’t ruin your vacation as soon as you get home by jumping in the wrong way. Follow these three steps to enjoy your vacation, to maximize your creativity, and to be reenergized when you return.

1. Familiarize yourself with your surroundings (Figure out where to go)-Strategize with why

What is the first thing you do when you’re walking off the jetway? You look around for signs to familiarize yourself with your surroundings. When you are coming home from a trip, you need to figure out how to get out of the airport, where you parked, etc. The most important thing you should do is familiarize yourself with your surroundings.

It’s easy to jump right back in and assume you know what’s going on or what has happened. Most of the time, that’s because we are constantly checking email. However, that’s the worst thing you can do. That would be like unpacking your bag on the plane and trying to do laundry immediately. Please, for all of us, wait until you get home to do your laundry.

By now we are all familiar with Simon Sinek and his book, “Start With Why.” When you return from vacation, start with why. It’s time to remember the purpose, the mission, the vision, and the values of the organization.  Doing this will allow you to be successful in the second thing you must do.

2. Unpack your Mind (and your suitcase)-Document/Create Content

Now that you have familiarized yourself with why and you’re not focused on putting out fires (email) you have the chance to reflect and document your vacation or use the newly found creativity to generate contentthat is full of value.

It’s no secret that creating content on a regular basis will wear you down. By the time you leave for vacation it can seem impossible to write another blog, another whitepaper, to truly be engaged with users on social media. That’s okay, it happens to the best of us.

But, this is where it gets good. When you come back from vacation, your brain has had a chance to rest, your creative juice is flowing, you’ve experienced something new, you’ve learned something, and more than likely you are full of great ideas for content that will create value for your users.

Unpack those ideas, don’t let them stay in your mind where they will eventually become clutter (and you’ll forget them). Therefore, it’s important that you don’t do email first. When you get into the routine of email, your mind becomes cluttered and you are likely to lose all the momentum you have coming back from vacation.

Once you have unpacked your mind and documented your ideas and created valuable content, then jump into email.

3. Do your Laundry (Respond to all Communications)- Respond

Now it’s time to do your laundry. Open your email provider and see what’s waiting. Now that you’ve returned from vacation and followed the appropriate steps you will be in the right frame of mind to respond to emails.

Don’t rush these steps. I know it seems like you need to jump back in and get to emails as quickly as possible, but I guarantee that if you follow these steps your vacation will still feel like a vacation once you get back.

At the same time, you don’t want to jump right back into the swing of things, you also don’t want to delay getting back to work. There is a balance and a right way to do things, make the most of your vacation when your away, but don’t forget to make the most of it when you return as well.