5 Steps to Get Back to Work After Summer Vacation

Sep 3, 2010

Welcome back! The summer vacation season is over, and most of us are returning with a new energetic focus to our work. Projects and deadlines that lightened up in the vacation month of August are now getting new attention and urgency. So, now is an excellent time to dig out of your piles and make progress on those loose ends you’ve been letting go. Now is the time to tighten the slack! Here are some tips to help you do all that.

First and foremost, use the Urgency Zone approach I presented in my book to classify your next steps. It’s a fantastic way to make sense out of the huge task, e-mail, and paper messes you now have–it’s a great way to focus quickly on what you really need to do next. Here’s how to do that:

1. Create a fresh 2-page Workday Mastery To-Do List: Put Critical Now at the top of the first page, Opportunity Now in the bottom 2/3 of the first page, and Over-the-Horizon on the whole second page. If you’ve forgotten how to do that, or never done it before, watch this 7 minute video; it provides a quick review of how to set this up. Or see chapter 2 of my book Master Your Workday Now! for a full description. And if you have Microsoft Outlook, then instead of paper, set up the Outlook tasks system per Lesson 3 of my book Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook.
2. Next, do a brain dump—what’s on your mind? Is anything nagging you that really must be done today? If so, put it in the Critical Now section. Is there anything that must be done this week or next? Put those in the Opportunity Now section. And anything that’s on your mind that can wait longer than a week or two—make an entry for them on the second page—the Over-the-Horizon section. You’ll be amazed how good it feels to get those out of your head and into a system that really works.
3. E-mail: If you have a huge in-box full of unread mail (or read mail you’ve delayed action on), then do this: start at the top and, as your read them, classify the actions in your e-mail into the three Urgency Zones by placing entries for them in your 3-part to-do list. You should write a brief action statement for each and you may even want to copy links to those e-mail items into a text-based to-do document so you can quickly find the mail later. Better, if using Microsoft Outlook, convert them into Outlook tasks since such tasks retain all the e-mail text (see Lesson 8 of my book Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook for instructions). Or if any mail just needs a thoughtful reply, flag or star those in the in-box and write the replies soon.
4. Voice Mail: As you listen to your over-flowing voice mail system, classify the actions needed there into the same three urgency zones, and make notations in your Workday Mastery To-Do List for each.
5. If you have a stack of papers on your desk that you need to get through, do this: sort the stack into three piles: Critical Now, Opportunity Now, and Over-the-Horizon. Ideally, make corresponding action entries in your Workday Mastery To-Do list for important items.

Now take action! Start at the top of your Workday Mastery To-Do list and get those Critical-Now Items done immediately. Then work on the Opportunity Now section next. Tomorrow, glance through the Opportunity Now list and if anything there is becoming urgent, move it to the Critical Now section. And next Monday, review the Over-the-Horizon list and promote any items there that need more attention. To stay on top of this, I recommend you review the Critical Now list every hour or so, the Opportunity Now list once a day, and the Over-the-Horizon list once a week on Monday.

That’s it! Promise yourself to keep using this to-do list approach—it is a fantastic way to get and then keep your workday completely under control. So start making use of it today!