Back to Work After Holiday – And How to Keep That Holiday Feeling Alive

I’ve just come back from a week at a family resort in Italy—think buffet breakfasts, beachy afternoons, slightly chaotic dinners with the kids, and the luxury of not opening my laptop even once. It was glorious. But then Monday morning came around, and suddenly I was back at my desk, staring at a wall of emails and trying to remember how to form sentences that didn’t involve asking someone if they’d brought sun cream…

If you’ve ever tried to go from full holiday mode into productive hybrid-working-human mode, you’ll know it’s not exactly a smooth transition. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week—not just how to ease back into work after time off, but how to protect some of that holiday energy even once the out-of-office is off. I’m talking about carrying a bit of that slower, more spacious, more human rhythm into our evenings and weekends, and maybe even into the workweek itself.

The Post-Holiday Slump Is Real – Especially in Hybrid Work

When you work hybrid, there’s no physical ‘back to the office’ moment to mark your return. You're not schlepping to a station with a suitcase or getting welcome-back greetings from colleagues at your desk. For me, it was just: turn on the computer, open the calendar, and try to suppress the urge to Google ‘family resorts near me.’

That lack of transition can be jarring. You go from sun-drenched mornings and no meetings…to Teams notifications, budget reviews, and "just a quick call" requests. Even worse if you didn’t actually go away travelling and you’re doing all this from the same room you were using to read novels and watch TV all last week.

So if you’re hybrid, you need to create your own transition. On my first day back, I blocked out the morning. No meetings, no Slack. Just coffee, emails, and one very slow reconnection with my to-do list. I gave myself permission not to do anything ‘productive’ until after lunch. That helped enormously.

Try this:

• Block your first morning back as ‘Return & Reset Time.’

• Do a quick brain dump of anything lingering in your head from before the holiday.

• Review your calendar and kill any meetings you don’t need to attend.

• Look at your to-do list—but don’t panic. Pick one or two small wins to start.

The Myth of the ‘Refreshed’ Return

People love to say you’ll come back from holiday refreshed. But I think “disoriented and slightly resentful” is more accurate, especially if you’ve been genuinely unplugged.

Hybrid work adds to this weirdness, because home and work blur together. If you were at home, the same kitchen where you spent hours cooking family meals and doing baking with your toddler is now suddenly your ‘office.’ The fridge is still full of leftovers. You’re mentally on holiday, but Outlook wants you in three Zoom calls by noon.

So let’s stop pretending we’re supposed to hit the ground running. Instead, I try to give myself a two-day runway: the first day is about clearing space, and the second is about picking up pace. Only then do I feel like I’m really back in work mode.

Chasing the Holiday Feeling (Without Flying to Tuscany Every Friday)

Now, here’s the fun part: how do we bring that holiday mood into our non-holiday life?

Holidays feel amazing partly because we design them. We plan activities, breaks, meals, and even rest. They have rhythm and variety. You don’t spend the whole day on your phone or bouncing from email to email. There’s movement, sunshine, long conversations, ice cream after dinner.

So the question is: what would it look like to design a weekend—or even just a Tuesday evening—with the same care we put into holidays?

Here are a few ideas:

The Holiday Hour

Pick one hour each evening and treat it like you’re on holiday. Put your phone in another room. Make an aperitivo. Sit outside. Read a novel. Walk without a destination. This isn’t “self-care.” It’s holiday care.

The Sunday Plan-Down

We plan holidays weeks or months in advance, but weekends? Not so much. On Sunday mornings, try to ask:

• What’s our “outing” next weekend?

• What’s our “lazy time”?

• What food do we want to enjoy—not just shove down between errands?
  Even just one of those planned holiday-ish moments can change the tone of your whole weekend.

Home as Resort

Okay, hear me out: what if we thought of our home environment like a holiday rental? Could we tidy up a little more intentionally, put fresh sheets on the bed, declutter the surfaces, get some good snacks, or light a candle in the evening?

Hybrid working gives us this beautiful chance to move between modes. So why not make your home feel more like the place you go to be yourself—not just where you work?

Rituals of Return

Finally, I’ve realised that coming back from holiday needs its own rituals—especially when there’s no office door to walk through.

Some I’ve found helpful:

• Do laundry early. Don’t let the suitcase sit. It keeps your brain in limbo.

• Make something easy but comforting for dinner on your first night. (We went full Italian: pasta and seafood!)

• Don’t book anything big or intense on your first two days. Guard the re-entry.

• Tell someone about your holiday. Even just five minutes of “here’s what we did” helps bridge the gap between there and here.

• Schedule the next break. We booked a long weekend for next month—just knowing it’s there made the return feel less final.

So What’s the Takeaway?

Hybrid work blurs the lines between holiday and work more than ever. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

It means you can ease back in gently, with fewer expectations of immediate performance. It means you can take what you loved about your time off—slowness, playfulness, outdoor meals, unstructured time—and build it into your week in small ways. It means you’re allowed to have a spritz on a Wednesday evening and call it “rebalancing your work-life portfolio.”

So yes, I’m back at work. But maybe, just maybe, I’ve brought a little bit of that family resort with me—minus the buffet queue.

Buon ritorno!