I am away on another week of vacation in EuroDisney, Paris and Nice. Yes, it sucks to be me :o)

While I’m gone please enjoy this great interview from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart with Tal Ben-Shahar, the author of Happier.

Aaaahhh… Summer vacation. Depending on your fancy it’s time to lie on the beach with a good book, wear out your shoe soles exploring a strange city or scream your head off skydiving or in some other adrenaline-driven pursuit.

But invariably the vacation ends and you go back to work, and that transition can be a little rough.

Do you know that feeling? You come back to work happy and full of energy – but by the end of the first work day, you’re already feeling tired an unhappy. It’s almost like you didn’t have a vacation at all.

So here are a five tips to help you stay happy when you get back to work.

1: While you’re away, get away

Don’t take the company mobile and laptop on vacation. Don’t check your voice mail and email.

The point of a vacation is to get away and go to a different mental space, and if you’re preoccupied with work, chances are you’ll both enjoy your vacation less and get less relaxation out of it.

2: Let yourself get behind

When you get back from your vacation, you will invariably have fallen behind and have a lot of work to catch up on. There will be a ton of voice mails, emails and tasks that need your attention. THAT’S FINE!!! It’s unavoidable and it’s not your fault.

Look at it this way: If you can leave the company for two weeks and there’s no work waiting for you, you’re not really needed there.

So don’t expect to have a clear desk on your first day back – allow yourself to be behind and to catch up steadily.

3: Start with some easy tasks

When you get back to work, don’t immediately throw yourself at the toughest, hairiest most complicated tasks you have. Ease into work by doing something easy and simple – something you know you can do. Once you’re back in full swing you can go at the tough tasks.

4: Don’t overwork to catch up

It can be really tempting to work long hours to catch up after your vacation. DON’T!!! Work regular hours and stick to point 2 above.

5: Ask for help if you need it

If you find it difficult to catch up, don’t be afraid to ask your co-workers or manager for help. It’s important for you to be aware of any outstanding tasks that may have become critically late in your absence, and if you could use some help – it’s your responsibility to ask for it! It also greatly increases the chance that you will actually get help.

If you use these tips, you may find that your vacations feel more like vacations and that you can be even happier at work.

But on a fundamental level, there is something wrong with the idea that work drains you of energy and weekends and vacations recharge you. I know that this is how most people feel – but that’s not how it should be.

If work typically drains you of energy – if every week ends up draining you of life so you barely make it to Friday afternoon where you can finally relax – then something’s wrong. Don’t accept that state of affairs just because everyone else does.

When you’re happy at work, work can actually be a regenerative activity that leaves you with more energy so you leave the workplace with a spring in your step most days!

And THAT is the ultimate way to beat the post-vacation blues: Have a job you actually like!

Your take

Do you ever get the post-vacation blues? What do you do to beat’em? Have you also noticed that vacations these days seem to be more tiring than work (as this article says)?

Related posts

• Find your quitting point
• How to find a job you’ll love
• Never stay in a bad job. Fix it or leave.

Psychological studies point out one more reason why long meetings are no fun and get less done:

Imagine, for a moment, that you are facing a very difficult decision about which of two job offers to accept. One position offers good pay and job security, but is pretty mundane, whereas the other job is really interesting and offers reasonable pay, but has questionable job security.

Clearly you can go about resolving this dilemma in many ways. Few people, however, would say that your decision should be affected or influenced by whether or not you resisted the urge to eat cookies prior to contemplating the job offers.

A decade of psychology research suggests otherwise. Unrelated activities that tax the executive function have important lingering effects, and may disrupt your ability to make such an important decision. In other words, you might choose the wrong job because you didn’t eat a cookie.

Research by University of Minnesota psychologist Kathleen Vohs and colleagues indicates that we have a limited amount of what they call executive resources. Once they start to get depleted, we make bad choices.

And how do you consume your executive resources? In three ways. You use them every time you:

1. Exercise commitment (as in not eating that cookie you really wanted because you’re on a diet)
2. Focus your attention (as in listening to someone speaking, though you’d rather check email on your Blackberry)
3. Make a decision (as in choosing which of two possible projects to approve)

A-HA!!!!!

Business meetings require participants to commit, focus and make decisions – with no acknowledgment of the fact that in doing so they’re consuming a finite resource. Once this resource runs out, people make worse decisions!!!

Suddenly those three-hour project meetings aren’t looking so smart, are they? Not that they ever really did, but you know what I mean.

The article left me with a few questions:

• How do we recharge our executive resources?
• Can we increase our executive resources over time by exercising them? The way physical exercise makes you tired right now but increases your fitness over time.
• How quickly can they be recharged? Once they’re gone, are they gone for the day? The week? Or can they be recharged in time for the next meeting?

If you know the answer to any of these questions, I’d love to hear it!

Your take

What do you think? Have you noticed this kind of thing in meetings? What do you think is the cut-off point beyond which meetings just devolve into pointlessness and no good decisions can be made? An hour? Two? 15 minutes?

Related posts

• 5 simple ways to shut up in meetings.
• 5 weeeeeeird tips for great meetings.
• How to get people to arrive on time for meetings.

My buddy Kareem Mayan is starting a new site called RunByHumans.com, dedicated to stories of great, kind and human customer service.

Kareem is now looking for stories about “a customer experience where the customer-facing employee acts like a real, live human being, and isn’t restricted by dehumanizing company rules and regulations.”

As an example he cites this fantastic story from online shoe-seller zappo.com. In it, the store not only lets a customer return shoes bought for his mother after the official return date has passed (his mother passed away), they also send him flowers!

One of my favorite such stories is told by Catherine DeVrye in her book Hot Lemon and Honey. She once arrived at a hotel early in the evening, to give a corporate presentation the next day. As she checks in, the receptionist asks if she wants any in-room dining or a dinner reservation, but Catherine explains that she’s feeling a little ill with a sore throat and that she just wants to relax in her room.

A few minutes after she gets to her room, there’s a knock on the door. When she opens it, there’s a hotel employee with a cup of hot lemon and honey for her sore throat. This wasn’t something she’d ordered or even something the hotel normally served – it was just a gesture of concern and kindness for a fellow human being.

I think it’ll be a fantastic web site, and one that is sorely missing on the net today. I suggested that what Kareem’s really creating is the anti-consumerist.com, where outrageous stories of horrendous customer service abound :o)

Of course, my interest in this project is that people who are happy at work are much more likely to give that kind of service. Also, being able to help your fellow man through your job is likely to make you happy, so it works both ways.

So let’s give Kareem a hand: What’s the best and kindest customer service you have ever experienced or performed for someone else? Do you have a link, video or story that fits Kareem’s quest? Please write a comment here!

I had to share this wonderful cartoon by Polyp:

There’s also a cool animated version:

Does anyone honestly think that making more money, consuming more stuff, driving a bigger car or bagging that fancy title will make them happier?

It seems that many people consistently focus their time and energy on getting things that won’t make them happy – to the cost of the simple but important factors: Friends, family, meaning and fun.

Ask yourself this: How much of your time is spent doing things that make you or other people happy? And how much racing the other rats in the maze?

Here are some way to get out of the rat race:

• How to lose your fear of being fired
• How to find a job you’ll love
• The top-10 advantages of low-rent living

I think Lily Tomlin said it best:

“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”

(If this post looks familiar, it’s because it IS a repost – this time with full attribution to Polyp who made it and who was kind enough to give me retroactive permission to use his cartoon – Thanks!)