A week to come back
I belong to those people who extremely struggle to use newly gained energy (for instance gained during a vacation) on the first days back at work. I am excited to go back and work on my projects, get my thoughts out and exchange ideas with my team, but my head is simply still stuck thinking about all the great vacation-moments. It feels like my body is sitting at my desk, while my head is replaying the nice family dinners, the long walks, the slow mornings, the interesting book I read in this super comfy chair, the cute streets in this little town I visited … You can imagine that then the thought of ‘oh well, get a grip, your vacation is over’ kind of hurts (pretty bad actually!). Bye bye new motivation, bye bye fresh energy.
Mh… if there were only a way to transition more smoothly from vacation back to work.
Well, there is!
A writing week
5 days (or more :D) on which you dedicate your full attention to one project (or two).
No meetings. No other appointments. Instead, plenty of patience and self-compassion, and a space in which you feel comfortable.
During a writing week you get the chance to extend your vacation for a little while longer, which makes it easier to handle those post-vacation-thoughts, while also making good progress on a project of your choice (aka worcation). And the best thing is, if done right, you end this week relaxed AND with a great success moment, namely when you look at what you have achieved in only a couple days. Important note here: Be kind with yourself. Not visually seeing the progress (e.g., numbers of pages written) at the end of the writing week does not mean there was no progress at all. No doubt, after 5 days of focus work, your mind has definitely made new connections, you have gained new perspectives, and decluttered your thoughts. I guarantee you, you will not end at the same point you started.
Based on my experience, there are a few things that one should keep in mind when planning such a writing week. Check out this ‘Writing Week Guide’ I wrote for the ComCom blog where I list some of my tips. Whether you are aiming to transition from your summer or Christmas vacation, or whether you are looking for a way to re-focus on a particular project after a long period of procrastination (yup, happens to everyone), a few days of going away and taking time to just let your thoughts come and go can be magical. For inspiration, here are some impressions of three of my ‘weeks to come back’:
Winter-Writing-Week 2022
Just recently, in January 2022, I took a writing week outside of Hamburg (GER) to write a first draft of a research paper. As the COVID-19 regulations made travelling unnecessarily complicated, I decided to keep it simple and visit a friend of mine, who was starting a new job in the same week I wanted to do my writing. So, we were in the same boat when it comes to transitioning from the holiday period back to work - a very important aspect to consider when picking your writing-week-companions (all need to be in the same transition phase, otherwise it might become difficult with motivation). After arriving Sunday evening, we had a lovely dinner to kick-off our time together and then started fresh on Monday morning. She left to the office, while I sat down at the desk making a plan for the week.
Day 1 was dedicated to some admin work. I set my inbox to zero, set up my automatic reply, and then closed my emails for the remainder of that week, since the fewer distractions the better (and emails are distracting me big time). Then, I got an overview of my existing notes about my writing project and created a step-by-step plan for each day. And, I picked a smaller side project (working on this website actually) to turn towards whenever I would feel stuck with writing. Maybe you are able to concentrate on one project for the whole day, but I am not. I, preferably, have one other task (not too many!) to let my brain do something else for a little while in-between moments of mental fatigue.
Day 2 I spent entirely on the introduction and theory part of my paper. I had written up some paragraphs already, but they were missing structure and clarity. Also, before my writing week started, I had a supervision meeting in which we discussed the overall narrative of the paper we wanted to write. Since this meeting gave me the chance to set out clear expectations and to find a good starting point, I strongly recommend getting together with your team members prior to your writing week. Would be a shame if you spend days of writing in the wrong direction which could have easily been prevented by one conversation. Also, I already encountered some moments of fatigue here, so I switched to my side project and worked on that in the afternoon.
Day 3 was a mix of theory and methods and a re(re-re-re-)vision of the introduction again in terms of structure. At this point, I was getting really into my paper and started to like what I wrote. This gave me such a good feeling that I was not really disappointed to not meet my goal which I set out on day 1, namely to already start analysing my data. Plans are there to be changed, right? Again, whenever I lost my focus, I got creative on my side-project. It was actually a good practice of self-compassion. Yes, not writing during the writing week is absolutely OK!
Day 4 I then spent on my data. Luckily, analyses were not that complicated for this study, so I did not run into major dead-ends (which I normally always do at some point - haha). Yet, I reached a point (after the ‘high’ on day 3) where I suddenly disliked pretty much everything I wrote. For some reason, the paragraphs I was happy about yesterday seemed fragmented, and … wait, where did the flow of my paper go? Yeah, I guess it’s a normal phenomenon: You get so deep into a project that you get lost eventually. To get me out of this ‘low’, I invested some more creative energy into my side project and got excited for dinner, since I had special plans with my friend: going to a restaurant - yay! It was the last time I was going to a restaurant before returning to NL where we were in full corona-lockdown again. So, yeah, going to a restaurant was special :)
Day 5 - Well, the last day is an interesting one, because you are probably trying to wrap-up things while at the same time trying to figure out how you now feel about the work you produced. I was happy to have found my way out of the mood dip from the day before and started to feel proud again when reading through the pages I wrote. But, having such clear visual work output is not always the case (see Post-Summer-Reading-Week below). And that’s OK too.
Of course, all mornings and evenings were filled with activities I truly enjoy: doing yoga, drinking coffee, listening to music, having long conversations with my dear friend, sitting by the fire, cooking yummy food, watching a movie, going for walks. Remember: the ‘worcation’ part is half the deal!
Post-Summer-Reading-Week 2021
You can, of course, also replace the ‘writing’ with ‘reading’, ‘analysing’, ‘prepping’, or any other verb that best describes what you want to work on for that week. After my 3-week summer holiday, I went on a reading week, as I had no major writing to do but wanted to get familiar with the literature for my next study. I eded up going to the seaside by IJmuiden just outside Amsterdam (can highly recommend Basecamp for all tiny house lovers out there) to simply read, take notes, and reflect. I enjoyed it - a lot! But, to be honest, I read much less than I planned to. Why? Well, first of all, reading is completely underestimated. It can sometimes take much more energy than writing (I feel like) and after three weeks of having my laptop closed during my holiday, I just needed some time to adjust again. And that’s what I did. Reading, cooking, coffee, beach walks and repeat. At the end of the week, I not only was feeling ready to go back to my desk at home, but I also felt like I did some important personal reflection, since I spent the days just with me, myself, and I. Big success, even though visual work output was 0 (besides an emptier reading list).
Pre-Summer-Revision-Week 2021
In June 2021, a bit after an important PhD deadline for my first paper, I went on my very first writing week with one of my supervisors and three other wonderful women. Our home for the week was in the forest in Lage-Vuursche near Utrecht (NL), where we enjoyed yoga, walks, runs, open book shelves to go through, delicious barbecues by the fire, and game nights (you see we really lived out the ‘cation’ part of our worcation). During that week, I worked on the revisions of my paper and I was finally able to watch some left-over conference presentations that were still on my watchlist.
To sum up: Whatever you do during your week to ‘come back’, I guess the most important thing is that you create time and space for yourself to re-focus and slowly find your way into your project again while keeping up some vacation vibes.
I hope my experiences can inspire you to plan your own next writing week.
Enjoy wherever you go and whatever you do!