Get a good replacement and make clear arrangements with them.
Does the person know what your duties are? Which ones can be taken over and which ones are temporarily on hold? What happens to your e-mail, mail and meeting attendance? What can and do you want to be called or emailed for and what absolutely not? Agreements about this are very important and will prevent you from drowning in overdue work upon your return. And don’t want to go on vacation right away (after strangling your replacement a bit).
Make sure your supervisor knows what to expect immediately during your absence (and immediately after!).
Unless your replacement is going to work 16-hour days, it is inevitable that your work will experience a “production dip. Projects come to a temporary halt, non-urgent things remain. Accept that yourself!
A few weeks before your vacation, look ahead to your final work days.
Block out time in your calendar to complete and hand over things. Start ahead of time on any handover document, describing for your replacement what is involved, what he or she can expect and what should be done with it.
Don’t start new things with your work week.
Make it clear to your colleagues how much time you have left and what they can and cannot expect from you. On the last day of work, keep your calendar as empty as possible. Go for handling, handing over, cleaning up, tying up the last ends. If you have prepared it properly this should be possible. Keep room for unexpected developments; you always have more to do on such a final day than you think. Clear your head, too: write down everything in a to-do list for your colleague to take over or what you can pick up right after your vacation.
In your vacation, don’t read your mail.
Before you know it, you are mingling in discussions. If all goes well, your out-of-office reply tells you that you are not here, that colleague X is replacing you for things that cannot wait. Turn your out-of-office reply on as early as the morning of your last day of work and off only on the second day after your vacation. It seems like a pointless buffer but can make a world of difference. If you are flexible in your vacation dates, you can also choose to have your first day of work again on Friday, instead of the calibrated Monday. Friday is a quiet day in many organizations and gives you a chance to catch your breath and have more time to go over the state of affairs with your replacement. Block out one or two more days to get a quiet start.
Make clear choices in the work ahead.
You don’t have to read everything written in your absence. Hopefully your replacement has already handled and discarded a lot of mail and e-mail. Look at what lies ahead, set priorities, but remain realistic.
