Avoid The Post-Vacation slam.

Your big vacation is ending. For seven days, it was all blue sky and clear blue sea. You return home, and the First day back at work what happens? You have a stack of phone messages on your desk. Your mail is eight inches high. There are memos, reports and announcements all over your desk. The benefits of your vacation are all but negated. You are slammed.

On that first day back, and often the second, the pressure to catch up may be too intense. The same thing can happen when you are on an overnight trip or out of the office all day. The moment you return, the whole world falls in on you.

Plan your vacation so that you return one day before you told everybody you would. Include a decompression phase in your plans; your trip is not complete until you comfortably reintegrate yourself into your home and office.

You are far better off taking one less vacation day and building in a day for transition and decompression than coming back too abruptly. Avoid returning to the office on a Monday. Mondays are already high-pressured. Manage the beforehand so that when you return, you feel good about having been away, and you feel good about being back.

Before you leave, instruct others to filter reroute, or handle as many phone calls as possible, and to segment your important, urgent and interesting accumulations. Return to a clean office, a clean desk, a clean home, and a clean car.

When you travel, or for that matter, en- gage in any task, go beyond halfway before taking a "mid-way" pause. By taking care of the "heavy half" first, and acknowledging this completion, you will be far more energized to complete the shorter, lighter second halt

Jeff Davidson, MBA, CMC, is the Executive Director of the Breathing Space [R] Institute; a popular speaker; and the award-winning author of 25 hooks, including Breathing Space: Living and Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Sped- tip Society.