Welcome to our first blog post! Spring Break is upon us and we thought this would be a good time to discuss what it takes to survive Spring Break out of the office. We will be in the office most of this week–unfortunately–but for those who are lucky enough to get away, here is a couple of tips on how to come back relaxed and happy instead of stressed out with an inbox full of emails and things to do.

• First things first. Make sure to set up  autoresponder on your email–in our case–all of our email addresses we monitor. It helps to let our members and clients know that we are away and they’ll get a response when we get back.

• Make sure you update your calendar to let your co-workers and clients know you are gone for the week so they don’t try to schedule meetings with you.

• Try to look ahead to the week you’ll be back and complete some of those tasks you may have before you leave. It’ll make your life more sane when you come back into the office. You’ll relax more while you’re gone knowing that you were able to complete some of the things on your plate.

• Know that it is OK to miss some last minute requests by clients, and you can apologize when you get back. Everyone needs a vacation. If you miss an email because of the sheer number of emails from the past week, just let everyone know that it is possible you missed something, and to please follow up with you when you get back.

• It may help if you arrive back home on a Saturday instead of Sunday before your first workday so you can collect yourself before your first day back. Or, you could always extend that break into the Monday after and come back Tuesday if possible.

All in all, all you need are a few adjustments so your mind can be at ease while you’re gone and you can be not as stressed when you arrive back at the office.