Nora Brown Design

Gone Fishing: Keeping up while you're on vacation

I recently returned from a very relaxing and wonderful vacation. On the trip home, I was pondering some of the ways one can make the transition back into real life a little easier. Emails and tasks can pile up while you’re away, and seem a little overwhelming when you return. Here are a few things you can do to make it easier on yourself:

1. First, make sure the friends, family, and clients that would be likely to contact you actually know that you’ll be away and out of touch.
2. Change your incoming phone message to indicate that you’re gone and when you’ll return (if it’s a long trip, tack on a couple of days at the end to recover from travelling, jet lag, etc.).
3. Likewise, set up an email auto-responder. Learn more about email auto-responders.
4. If you send an email newsletter, you can write one up before you go, and schedule it to send out while you’re away.
5. If you run a blog, you can compose a couple of posts and set them up to publish while you’re gone. You might consider leaving comments closed for those posts, as you won’t be available to respond or monitor them.

Do you have other ideas?