Post-Vacation Blues? Here’s How to Cope.

Expert advice on motivating yourself when you’re not ready to log back on.

July 09, 2024

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Call it the post-vacation paradox: Instead of feeling recharged and refreshed upon returning to work after a break, you’re drained and struggling to regain your drive. In this article, the author shares insights from two experts on how to boost your motivation and feel more confident about returning to work.

Your summer vacation was bliss: mornings at the beach, impromptu stops for ice cream, and afternoons whiled away with a good book. Now you’re back at your desk, facing what feels like zillions of Slack messages and emails, and your vacation juju is fading. You need to motivate, stat.

Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Insider, The New York Times, BBC, and The Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.

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