How To Focus On Your Work Before Taking A Big Vacation

Packing, flights and last-minute changes to the itinerary are all part of going on a big vacation, but factors like these can make it hard to get work done. Here’s how to focus on work before going away.

Spend time planning outside of work.

While it can be tempting to spend time researching where you’re traveling to while at work, doing this for too long will probably disrupt your work schedule. We all know how easy it is to fall down a rabbit hole once you start reading up on different attractions and tourist sites.

So the more time you spend planning time outside of work, the less time you’ll spend trying to cram in all your research during the workday.

Protect your time.

Between nosy coworkers and way too many meetings, there are so many ways to get distracted at work.

But you don’t have to — protect your time by remembering that you don’t have to share any information with them that you don’t want to, demonstrating that their prying makes you uncomfortable. Just go to meetings that are absolutely necessary.

Write things down to keep track of them.

You don’t want things to go in one ear and out the other. Deanna Hartley, a senior copywriter and community manager at CareerBuilder, writes on the site about how to get things done at work during the holidays when others are off, but her advice also applies to staying motivated before vacation.

One of her tips is to “set daily goals for yourself.” “Write down a list of tasks that you need to accomplish for the day. Keeping something tangible by your side may increase your motivation to cross all the items off your list before you leave for the day,” she writes.

Work in the right place.

Amanda Abella, an online business coach, writer and author of Make Money Your Honey, writes on the website Due that you should “go to your best place to hustle.”

“While I can work from home, the reality is I get way more done in my coworking space. Sometimes I can get double the amount of work done at my coworking space versus trying to work from home. That’s why I’ve practically been living at my coworking space the last couple of weeks. Granted, I have a lot of distractions at home. You may not,” she writes. “Where’s the best place for you to hustle? Is it at home? The library? A coffee shop? Wherever it is, rework your schedule so you can spend a good chunk of your time there. Sometimes, if you want to get your work done before a vacation, you need to go to the location where you know you can focus best.”

This article is by Jane Burnett and originally appeared on The Ladders. It has been adapted and reposted here with permission.