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How to Stay Productive After a Holiday - Interview with Cory Huff
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Jun 3, 2024
Preparing for your upcoming holiday is exciting, you’re pumped with adrenaline and counting down the hours until you can clock off, but the feeling of returning is usually on the other end of the spectrum. The feeling of dread creeps in as you set your alarm for your first day back at work. To help you avoid these negative emotions, we caught up with Cory Huff, head of marketing at Productive Flourishing who shares his top tips on how you can prepare for your return to work after a holiday and stay on top of your game. #productivitytips #stayproductive #postholiday _________________________________________________________________ TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Introduction 00:09 What tips would you give to someone who can't get motivated after a holiday? 03:20 How can someone prepare for a break so they are organised upon their return? 05:55 How can someone prioritise on a task when they don't know where to begin? 08:58 What are your top 5 productivity tips? 15:13 Any final thoughts on the subject? ____________________________________________________________________ Follow CareerAddict online here:
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0:00
If you're feeling the post-vacation demotivation and you find yourself sitting at your desk thinking
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why am I having such a hard time getting back into the swing of things after vacation? There's a few things going on
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One is I would say don't try to make yourself work harder or push yourself to go past your limits
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You are in a transition phase. You are coming from doing something that you love, possibly, or spending some time with family or loved ones
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into doing something different. It's a context switch. So have some compassion with yourself and allow yourself to ease back into things
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The next thing I'll say is allow yourself to experience some of the grief that you're having
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It is very common for people to regret having to go back to work or figure out why they can't stop thinking about what they were doing before
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So if you are experiencing some post-vacation grief, that's okay. Allow yourself to acknowledge that it's there and find ways to reconnect with the things about your job that you enjoy
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You might be lonely. Quite frequently, when we go on vacations, we spend time with family and friends and people
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people that we love. If you're missing those people, write them a letter, send them a thank you
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note or a thank you email, letting them know how much you enjoyed the time together, and allow
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yourself to relive the experience of being together. One of the core principles of the science
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of happiness is reliving happy experiences. So allow yourself to reconnect with that, and then
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go connect with your coworkers or connect with your friends that you haven't seen since before vacation
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You might also be burned out. If you're suffering from demotivation post-vacation
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it might be that you went so hard on your vacation that you need a vacation from your vacation
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Make sure that you're well-rested. Make sure that you have given yourself enough time
2:10
to do all the work that you need to do so that you're not burned out
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and so that you can recover. The last thing I'll suggest is find a creative work ritual
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One of the things that you'll see in a lot of productivity books and books that talk about performance is having a ritual that allows you to get
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into the zone. And this is different for everybody. But for myself, most mornings I wake up
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I exercise. I either do yoga or I play basketball. I take a bath or a shower. And then I do some
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meditation. And then I have breakfast. And it's usually a mix of either high protein food or some
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hot chocolate if I'm feeling fancy and carefree for that day. But having that ritual, sitting down
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on my desk with a cup of tea or a cup of hot chocolate, sort of triggers my brain to know that
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it's time to work and it's time to sort of slip into things. Even if your ritual is just 15 minutes
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it allows your brain to have that transition time so that you can tell yourself that it's time
3:17
to get to work. Here's how I prepare for vacations and breaks
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First of all, I make sure that I know what needs to happen not only while I'm gone, but also
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for the two to three weeks after I get back. Quite frequently, I will get with my boss, my coworkers, and my employees, and I'll
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say, okay, here's all the things that need to happen in that time period
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Here's who's assigned to each of those things, and then I'll make sure that they know
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how to do those things and if they don't know how to do them I'll make sure that they get trained
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on it I give myself at least a week before I leave to make those assignments and make sure that
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everybody knows what they supposed to do and how to handle it just by doing those things and setting clear expectations up front you set yourself up for a lot less heartache and worry while you gone and when you get back
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And that way when you get back, everybody on the team knows what needs to continue happening
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while you're catching up on what happened while you were out. The other thing I'll do is I'll make a document for myself that includes all of the assignments that I made
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as well as links to all the training videos or other things that I might have made for my
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co-workers team, employees, so that there's one document that everybody can access
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We use Google Docs. Some people use a project management app like Asana, but having all of those assignments in one
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place so that everybody on the team can see them and knows who's doing what, when is a really
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great way to make sure that stuff can happen without you being there
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And it's also just a great way of working even when you are there so that people don't have to continually come back to you to ask you what's supposed to happen
5:02
Obviously set up a vacation email auto responder. I also make sure that anybody who's taking over any of my responsibilities, that their contact information is in my email auto responder
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and that I will specifically tell people in the email if you need help with X, Y, or Z, go to so-and-so person and here's their email address
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And if it's a long vacation, if I'm going to be away for more than a week
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I make sure to schedule myself another day at the end of my vacation
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to catch up on all of my life stuff so that I'm ready to focus on work when my vacation is over
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So whether it's grocery shopping or making sure the pets have food, cleaning the house
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whatever needs to happen at the end of my vacation, that all of that stuff is ready and done so that I can focus on work
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If I'm given a task or a project that I don't know how to do or I don't know where to start
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the thing I start with is breaking that project down into pieces
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We also call those chunks at productive flourishing. So, for example, let's say that I am, I know that I need to hire somebody to do something for us
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and I don't know how to do that job, and I don't know where to look
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So that might look something like this. I have a general idea of what I know the teammate needs to do
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I'm going to draft or go find an example job description and break and just have that draft to start with
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And then I might have the team take a look at it and say, does this sound right
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And then some other part, pieces of that, I'm going to need to post the job description
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I'm going to need to review the applicants. If I'm lucky, I can also talk to some people who do that job so that I can figure out
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how they do the job and what pitfalls I might need to know about
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then I'm going to have to basically just go through and say
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all right, from here, what else do I think I might need to do? And roughly how long do I think it's going to take me
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to do all of those individual pieces? Quite often, if I don't know how to do something
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I will go to somebody else and ask them. I might go to a friend or a coworker or a colleague or former coworker
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or somebody that I've met at a conference or something and say, hey, I have to hire somebody to do this and I don't really know how to do that or how to find those
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people. What can you tell me? And basically from their feedback, I might be able to gather some
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clues about how to do that. But the big thing is taking that project that I don't know how to do
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and breaking it down into individual pieces so that I can figure out how to do those individual
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pieces, which eventually add up to a full project. And I will say if I do know how to do it
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and it's just a really big project and I'm not quite sure how to get started
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The best thing that I can do for myself is to say, okay, when is this due
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When does this absolutely have to be turned in? And then I'll give myself a little, a few days buffer
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So if I know that it due in two weeks I try to say okay I going to try to have this done in 10 days instead of 14 days so that I have some time to review it and make sure that it done right And then I take the individual elements So let say I writing a sales page I will I say okay I going to have the sales page done in 10 days
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So that means that I need to have the copy written in the next like three or four days
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And then I need a day or two to have somebody edit it and make sure that it looks good
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And then I need a couple of days to have all of that copy put on the website and all the design elements added
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I might need to give myself another couple days to work with a designer to do that
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But really, the piece to start with is figuring out what is the due date
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and then which pieces need to be done along the way at what time and what order
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And that's usually how I figure out how to begin. All right, here we go
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My top five productivity tips. Number one is managing your time energy and attention
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Productivity and time management is really about managing where you. you put your attention, where you put your focus, and how much energy you put into any given
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task. We all have the same amount of time. And we really have to make sure that we are very
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intentional about how we decide where to put our time, our energy, and our attention. So I make sure
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that the things that I'm working on are the most important things. I try to make sure that I
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take good care of my energy and that I do the things that take up a lot of energy in my most
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productive time periods, which is usually early in the morning, like 8.30 in the morning until about
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11 o'clock, 1130 in the morning. That's when I am most productive. That's different for other people
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So I try to make sure that I do those then. Productivity tip number two. Practice these five skills
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So it's going to be visualize, articulate, prioritize, chunk, and and sequence. Okay. So visualize it's just exactly what it sounds like. Like I'm going to imagine
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what this goal looks like, what this project looks like when it's done. I'm going to articulate
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either speak or write down what it looks like when it's done. Then I'm going to prioritize it. I'm going
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to take the pieces and say this needs to be done here and this needs to be done here and this
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project is more important than this project. So I'm going to make sure that gets done first, just prioritizing those things. And then taking the individual elements
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of those projects and chunking them down into small pieces that I know I can get done in a week
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or a day. And then I'm going to sequence them and say, okay, I know that all those individual
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elements need to get done in this order, but you can really only do that after you've broken
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them down into pieces. All right, productivity tip number three. Stick to the five projects rule
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So the five projects rule is in any given time period, and this is based on sort of the
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productivity science research that you can find in the literature. In any given time period
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they'd call it a month or a week or a year, your brain can really only hold on to no more than
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five projects. The ideal is three or four, but no more than five. And that means that if you've got
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a year-sized project, something that's going to take you a year, you're going to renovate your house, then you can't have more than five of those in any given year. And renovating a house sounds like a huge
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project to me, that might actually be two projects. And what a year-long project looks like is
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different for everybody. And then, of course, from the year-long project, that breaks down into
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a quarter-sized project, a month-sized project, a week or a day, right? So in any given day
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you really only have like three to five important tasks or things that you're going to get
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done that day that allow you to feed up into the five projects that you're going to get done for
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the week or the month. Five projects rule. Okay, productivity tip number four, set smart goals
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This is really common. You'll see this. Lots and lots of productivity people talk about this
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Smart goals stands for simple meaningful actionable realistic and trackable Simple goal means that you can look at it without wondering what the heck is that Meaningful I mean you actually care about it You have to have a little bit of investment
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in the goal in order to make it happen, that it's actionable, that it's something that can
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actually be done. You know, something that you can't do is not a goal. Realistic, you
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your goal needs to be achievable within a realistic time period with the resources that you have
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on hand. Saying that you're going to do something that you can't do in the next year is not a goal
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right? And then trackable. Your goal should be trackable. You should be able to mark your progress
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on that goal. All right. And then productivity number five, productivity tip number five is use time
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blocking in your schedule. Time blocking is simply the practice of saying I am going to
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block out chunks of time in my calendar to get certain projects done. And there's different types
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of projects and different types of time blocks. If you head over to productive flourishing.com
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slash time dash blocking, we break this down into great detail. But here's the basics
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There's four different kinds of time blocks, focus blocks, admin blocks, social blocks, and recovery
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blocks. Focus blocks are generally 90 to 120 minute blocks in your calendar where you're going to do
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deep work. This might be script writing or it might be writing software code or it might be designing
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some complex piece of graphics. It's stuff that takes long focused attention. Admin blocks are usually
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30 to 60 minute lower energy blocks from when you're not in the zone. And this allows you to do things
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like check your email, do a bunch of small tasks. And then social blocks are usually like 90 to 120 minute
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blocks of time when you're primed and energetically in the right space to meet other people
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And so this could be a long meeting. It could be going to a networking event. It could be going
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to a conference. Social blocks are time with other people. Recovery blocks, variable length blocks
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that you can use to fit in between your meetings or at the beginning or end of the day that
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allow you to recover from the thing that you just did. So if you spent two hours, right
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you might need a 10-minute recovery block to go for a walk, get yourself some tea
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take a break and allow your mind to rest and recuperate before you jump into an admin block or a social block
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For some people, at the end of a social block, you might need several hours of recovery
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because you're exhausted by talking to other people. For myself, social blocks and recovery blocks often overlap
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If I have spent the day in deep focus and deep work, nothing helps me recover better
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than going and having a drink with friends and enjoying some social time where we goof off
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maybe play a game together. So those are my five productivity tips. Final thoughts on productivity. Productivity is a lifelong learning process. And productivity is
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different for different people. I have ADHD. My brain doesn't work the way that a lot of people's
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brains work. I process things very quickly, but I have a natural tendency to miss details
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So I have to build processes into my life that remind me and enable me to go back and review any missed details that I might have
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And I also hire people on my team who are very meticulous and detail-oriented to help me catch those things that slip through the cracks
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Again, productivity is a lifelong learning process. I'd encourage you to pick up the book, start finishing by Charlie Gilke
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Love this book. It helps you understand. how productivity is a lot less rigid than you think and a lot more creative and malleable
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You can build your own sort of productivity system that allows you to be your best self and finish the projects that matter most to you
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