by Ted Sherman

Created on: January 06, 2009

This year's return from the holidays had to be one of the most stressful in history. Many people have to ask, is my company in trouble? Is my job still there or will I have to take a pay cut to keep my job? Of course, the weather will be lousy for at least another 12 weeks. There's ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in Israel. What can you do about it when it's time to get back to work?

According to the London Daily Mail, a way to prepare to recover from the holidays and once again deal with the uncertainties of the workplace is to scream. The recommendation suggests you prepare for going back to work by first finding a nice quiet place alone, and then rant and rave until you can get the stressful feelings all out of your system, and you're ready to go back to work.

I'm not sure letting it all hang out like that will do you any good, and could possibly get you a ticket to the closest mental hospital. However, I can suggest several, more quiet and logical ways to deal with the stress of returning to work after a holiday vacation.

In my long business career, there were many times when I disliked ... no, hated ... returning to the drudgery of work after enjoying the year-end holiday time with my spouse and children. If the vacation involved travel to an entirely different environment, such as Malibu, Hawaii, a Disney park or other dream world, the readjustment was much more difficult. Instead of looking forward to the daily grind, I always lamented: why can't I just do the holiday fun things for the rest of my life?

The way I handled my return to work was to ease myself into it gradually. For 20 years I was the manager of a team of very bright adverising professionals, and I made sure we helped each other get back into our very busy and deadline-driven workload as comfortably as possible.

For the first week, we met at coffee breaks and lunchtimes to discuss what each of us had done during the holidays. Because I discouraged the natural urge to talk about it during required work hours, these fond holiday memory sessions didn't affect our schedules. Of course, we couldn't help interrupting work for a few quick minutes at other times to brag about kids, show photos and funny cards, and tell jokes about useless Christmas gifts and stale fruitcakes.

Naturally, there were glitches. I can remember several occasions when I had to take an employee aside and quietly discuss the need for picking up the pace on productivity. There were mostly minor lapses that didn't need any disciplinary response. In that kind of potential problem situation, I tried to keep my holiday spirit alive by cutting the employee some slack.

Each of us cooperated by letting our gradual immersion into work happen naturally, with the minimum of stress. After a tough start on Monday, and a bit of improvement on Tuesday, it was back to business as usual by Wednesday. And maybe dream about next year's holiday on Thursday.

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