5 Tips for Avoiding Work on Your Vacation

Like many of us, I’ve been a victim of working whilst being on holiday. As someone who works for a handful of startups and for myself, the pressure of not being connected or involved was always front of mind as I headed off to the sun.

Our modern society keeps us connected to the world of social media, apps, email, and cloud services. On average, we commence 150 mobile sessions on our smartphones every single day. Another study highlights that this can consist of over 2,500 touches. Staying in the loop has become a natural human habit, and we weave it into our vacation routines. Many people jump on emails, written work, calls, and even meetings when they’re supposed to be soaking up the sun on vacation. For many of us, work takes up one-third to one-half of every day.

Sounds obvious, but vacations boost our mood. Everything from daily stress to our risk for developing heart problems decreases. The American Medical Association’s research showed that, for men, taking a yearly vacation decreased the likelihood of heart disease by 32 percent.

The same resonates for productivity. Seventy-seven percent of HR professionals believe that your productivity and results improve after a vacation.

We’ve put together a few suggestions for avoiding work on vacation, but also addressing the planned vacation, so your calendar is totally free in advance:

1Work like a machine

Working on holiday isn’t ideal. Making sure you are prepared is important if you hope to avoid even a glimpse of work during the vacation.

Making sure you plan ahead will save you a lot of efforts when you are on holiday. Doing an extra hour or two of work each night the week before your vacation will pay off. Putting in extra hours now will allow you to zone out of work by leaving all of your work energy at the office.

2Create an Out-of-Office Reply

A well-constructed out-of-office email can be a very effective way to reduce any incoming workload while you’re on vacation. Out of office replies alert your colleagues and contacts that there will be a delay in response.

To reduce the chance of any annoying messages, meeting requests, or even calls while you’re on vacation, you’ll need to make sure your OOO message points people in the right direction.

Before you jet off, spend some time creating a draft OOO message.

Here are a few things to consider as you begin to craft your auto responses:

• Inform them with websites, links, statistics.
• Re-direct them with contacts, email addresses, or phone numbers.
• Educate them with attachments, websites, and articles.
• Entertain then with a snappy bit of comedy about where you are.

Pass the draft over to one of your colleagues or even your manager to double check that you are directing people to the best resources. It’s easy to do, and it can free you from having to check email on your vacation.

3Prepare Your Internal Team

For your co-workers, you heading off for a few days (or even weeks) could present a logistical nightmare. All of the knowledge you hold travels with you. Capturing that knowledge where your teammates can access it makes life easier for everyone.

Using services like Evernote, Dropbox, and Google Drive to store essential information in clear, well-outlined folders will help pass the baton to those still in the office.

Evernote is a great example of a service for capturing notes, images, and documents. You can create a free account here. Start creating a mega note with all of the useful information and data that your internal team will need while you’re gone. Send them the note before you leave and ensure they know what’s inside.

The same can be done using a Dropbox account to help keep all of the cogs turning.

4Clear Your Mind

Zenning out on holiday is one of the biggest challenges for many people. According to data provided travel company Expedia, only 53 percent of workers come back feeling rested after their holiday. This is a huge problem for the world of work.

If employees aren’t getting the rest they need, company productivity and, more importantly, employees’ mental health, will suffer.

Meditation is growing in popularity thanks to its cognitive benefits. Meditation boosts memory and reduces stress and anxiety. A 2012 study found that, over an eight-week period, meditation reduced stress in candidates who meditated after they worked on tests or exercises.

Many people try to avoid personal development activities while on vacation because practicing them can feel like work in itself. However, meditation is something you should consider. A five to ten minute daily meditation during your vacation can help to clear your mind of stress, negative feelings, and even anxiety about work issues.

Spending time on yourself is so important. If you are still skeptical, try the following for a full week and see how you get on.

How to get started:

• Download a meditation app like Headspace, Calm, or Mindfulness
• Try a five-minute meditation for a full week, in a quiet environment
• Find a meditation buddy to work with

The benefits of meditation are continuing to grow. This evidence-based resource provides a strong list of cognitive, stress-associated, and health benefits to meditating.

5No Wi-Fi zones

Exploring rural areas on your vacation can be a little unnerving. Your knowledge of the area is often limited, and you’re likely to face language barriers. To make matters worse, you may encounter Wi-Fi dead zones.

Scary, right?! Not necessarily. Getting out of the reach of technology can also be very effective at helping you to escape work. If you want to zen out fully, there’s no better excuse than being in an area with no access to Wi-Fi. Rather than trying to figure out phone contracts and ways to stay connected, why not just disconnect? If it’s free to call emergency services wherever you’re headed, then there may be no need for Wi-Fi.

Whether or not you successfully avoid work on vacation is totally up to you. If you can remove digital temptations and mentally remove yourself from the work zone, you’re more likely to return to work refreshed and ready to tackle any challenge.

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About the author:Francesco D’Alessio runs a YouTube channel with over 8,000 subscribers that features weekly videos about productivity apps and tools. He works remotely in the South West of the UK for a handful of technology startups.

Countable and Uncountable Nouns: Rules and Examples

Countable Nouns

Countable nouns refer to items that can be counted, even if the number might be extraordinarily high (like counting all the people in the world, for example). Countable nouns can be used with articles such as a/an and the or quantifiers such as a few and many. Look at the sentence below and pay particular attention to the countable noun:

Here is a cat.

Cat is singular and countable.

Here are a few cats.

Here are some cats.

Other examples of countable nouns include house, idea, hand, car, flower, and paper.

Uncountable Nouns

Uncountable nouns are nouns that come in a state or quantity that is impossible to count; liquids are uncountable, as are things that act like liquids (sand, air). Abstract ideas like creativity or courage are also uncountable. Uncountable nouns are always considered to be singular, and can stand alone or be used with some, any, a little, and much. See the examples below for reference:

An I.Q. test measures intelligence.

Intelligence is an uncountable noun.

Students don’t seem to have many homework these days.

Because homework is an uncountable noun, it should be modified by much or a lot of, not many.

Students don’t seem to have much homework these days.

A lot of equipment is required to play hockey safely.

Since uncountable nouns are singular, they also require singular verbs. If you’re ever trying to decide whether to write the information is or the information are, remember that information is an uncountable noun and therefore needs is.

Good information are necessary for making good decisions.

Good information is necessary for making good decisions.

Additional examples of uncountable nouns include water, soil, love, literature, and dust.

Both Countable and Uncountable Nouns

Some nouns can be both countable and uncountable, depending on the context of the sentence. Examples of these versatile nouns include light, hair, room, gear, art, and science. See the examples below:

Did you have a good time at the party?

Here, time is countable (a time).

I don’t think I have time to do my hair before I leave.

In this sentence, time is uncountable.

There is some juice on the table.

There are some juices on the table.

In the first sentence, juice refers to the liquid beverage; thus, it is uncountable. In the second sentence, juice refers to the different varieties of juice (e.g., apple, grape, pineapple, etc.), and therefore, is considered a countable noun.

Anymore vs. Any More

Is anymore one word or two? It depends on how you’re using it. We’re here to set the record straight.

Any more and anymore have related meanings, but they’re not interchangeable. Whether you make anymore one word or two depends on how you’re using it. Any more refers to quantities (Would you like any more tea?). Anymore is an adverb that refers to time (I don’t like tea anymore.).

Any More and Anymore: A Detailed Explanation

When spelled as two words, any more refers to quantities.

Are there any more cookies?

You already ate seven; you don’t need any more!

When spelled as one word, anymore is an adverb that refers to time. It means “at present,” “still,” or “any longer.”

Why doesn’t Mom bake cookies anymore?

She doesn’t bake cookies anymore because you always eat them all and don’t leave any for her!

In certain dialects, some speakers use anymore as a synonym of nowadays.

Cookies are almost impossible to come by around here anymore.

However, this usage is not considered acceptable in formal writing. In fact, it’s a fairly rare usage, so you may want to remove it from your writing altogether unless you’re writing for a very specific audience.

The problem with anymore is the same problem many writers have with words like “anyway”, “anytime”, and “sometime”—each of them can be written as one or two words.

Just remember: If you’re talking about a quantity of something, use any more. If you’re talking about time, use anymore.

Sequence of Tenses–Grammar Rules

The rules governing verb tenses are dictated by logic; an action in the future obviously cannot happen before an action in the past. In writing, it’s a matter of looking at your clauses and sentences and determining when each action is happening relative to everything else. The past must come before the present, and the present before the future, etc. Pay particular attention to the verb sequence when you have a dependent clause before an independent clause, or a result clause before the if-clause.

When an independent clause is in the past tense, any dependent clauses must also be written in the past tense, not the present tense or the future tense. Consider the example below for an illustration of this rule:

The cat was bathing because his feet are dirty.

The cat was bathing because his feet will be dirty.

Because the tense of the independent clause is in the past (was bathing), the verb in the dependent clause should also be in the past, as illustrated in the sentence below:

The cat was bathing because his feet were dirty.

As with many rules in English, however, there is an exception. In cases where a universal truth is conveyed, the present tense may be used after the past tense. Consider this example:

Even the early doctors knew that washing hands prevents infection.

The fact that handwashing prevents infection is a universal truth that doesn’t change with time, so it can be expressed in the present tense. Of course, the rule regarding the sequence of tenses doesn’t mean that the actual verbs have to be in chronological order, just the actions. We can put the dependent clause at the beginning of the sentence, as illustrated below:

Athena will continue to learn English when she gets to the States.

It’s alright to have the future tense (will continue) before the present tense (gets) because the temporal conjunction (when) shows that the second action actually happens first.