Take Your Vacations Seriously

The holidays are right around the corner. If you're like me whose been living away from home, this also means going back and spending some time with the family after a long time.

This season can also be hectic to a lot of people. From shopping for gifts to parties, things can easily get out of hand that you could end up even more exhausted after the holidays are done.

If you're like me who would rather recharge, here are a few ideas to make the most out of this coming holidays:

Embrace slowness

It's normal to feel uneasy during a long vacation since we're used to the structure of our normal job. Instead of the automatic pull of work tasks, emails, and messages, we have to fill our time on our own.

This is good. Because now, you have time to think.

Take some time and imagine that's it's the new year and you're already back at work. What are the things that you would regret if you did or didn't do during this vacation?

Since you're not rushed by your job, maybe it's the best time to truly enjoy and take a little bit more time having those meals with your parents. As Tim Urban beautifully put it in "The Tail End", you may in fact, without realizing it, is nearing the end of your time with some of the people you value the most.

Dial back on work

For a lot of us who has been working from home for almost two years now, the line between life and work has been blurred. The official start and end of a work day seems to have been gone. Take this time to put some space between your personal life and your job.

Remember, you placed that out-of-office automatic email response for a reason. Unless you're the CEO of the company, it's extremely unlikely that everything would suddenly turn into a wasteland if you don't reply to that email immediately this time.

Reflect on the past year

Have you accomplished your goals for the year?

How well did you spent your time?

If Spotify does it with your music, why not have a review of your life this past year?

Though we still have this pandemic going on, there are still a lot of things to be grateful for. To most of us, this is the best time to step back, reflect, and identify these things. It's easy to take these things for granted because of our usual daily commitments.

Thanks for reading. I wish you a happy and peaceful holidays!