Returning to Work After Vacation: Why It Can Feel Harder Than Expected

You come back from holiday.

Maybe you've slept more. Spent time outside. Seen friends or family. Travelled somewhere new. Or perhaps you simply had a few quiet days without having to answer emails.

For a while, you feel different. Then you open your laptop. The inbox is full. Your calendar is already packed. There are decisions waiting for you, messages you haven't answered and perhaps a few things that went wrong while you were away. And within a surprisingly short amount of time, you might notice something familiar returning too:

Tension.

Urgency.

Distraction.

The feeling that you should already be "back on track".

Sometimes the first thought is:

I need another holiday.

But there may be something more interesting happening.

Returning to work isn't simply the end of a holiday.

It's a transition between two very different psychological environments.

And how we make that transition matters.

Why does vacation help us feel better?

One reason time away from work can feel restorative is that it gives us opportunities to recover from work demands. Research on occupational recovery often focuses on psychological detachment: the ability to mentally switch off from work during non-work time.

A large meta-analysis by Wendsche and Lohmann-Haislah, examining 86 publications and more than 38,000 employees, found that psychological detachment was associated with lower exhaustion, greater wellbeing, better sleep and other positive outcomes.

In other words, recovery isn't simply about being physically somewhere else.

You can be lying on a beach while mentally preparing tomorrow's presentation.

And you can be sitting at home on a Tuesday evening and genuinely feel that work is finished for the day.

Those are very different experiences.

Vacation can create more space for detachment, rest, enjoyable activities, social connection and experiences that are difficult to access when work is demanding most of our attention.

Research supports the basic idea that vacations can improve wellbeing. A meta-analysis by Jessica de Bloom and colleagues found positive effects of vacation on health and wellbeing, although those benefits tended to fade after people returned to work.

And that brings us to something many of us recognize.

The strange thing about returning to work after vacation

If you've ever returned from holiday and thought: Why am I stressed already?" you're not necessarily imagining it. One of the more interesting findings in vacation research is that the benefits of time away don't necessarily persist indefinitely. In an earlier study of vacation relief and burnout, Etzion and colleagues found that burnout decreased during vacation but gradually returned toward previous levels after people went back to work. This doesn't mean that holidays don't work.

It means something more nuanced:

Recovery can be temporary when the conditions that created the exhaustion remain unchanged.

Imagine carrying a heavy backpack every day. Putting it down for two weeks can feel wonderful.

But if you pick up exactly the same backpack when you return, the relief may not last forever.

This is one reason I think it's useful to be careful with the language of "resetting".

You don't necessarily need to reset yourself. Sometimes you need to understand what you're returning to.

We don't just return to work. We return to patterns.

This is where the transition becomes particularly interesting from a mindfulness perspective.

Before the holiday, you may have been moving quickly. Checking messages between meetings. Eating lunch while working. Switching between tasks. Thinking about work late at night. Saying yes automatically. Reacting quickly when something unexpected happens.

After a couple of weeks away, you might suddenly notice how different your attention feels. You take a walk without checking your phone. You have a conversation without thinking about the next meeting. You eat without simultaneously answering messages. You sleep according to your own rhythm.

Then work begins again. And very quickly, the old patterns can return. Not necessarily because you consciously choose them. They are familiar. And familiar patterns are easy to re-enter. This is one of the things mindfulness can help us see. Not by preventing stress. Not by making work permanently calm. But by helping us notice how we enter our familiar patterns in the first place.

The urge to catch up

There is another common part of the return that deserves attention. The urge to catch up.

You come back and see 143 unread emails. The mind immediately starts calculating:

"I need to clear this."

Then:

"I need to respond to that."

Then:

"I should probably get back into everything as quickly as possible."

Notice what can happen here. The pressure isn't always coming directly from the workload. Sometimes an internal sense of urgency gets added to it. You might feel tension in your shoulders. Your breathing becomes shallower. Your attention narrows. You start moving faster. And because you feel behind, you try to do more. Which makes it harder to think clearly. Which makes you feel even further behind. The cycle can become self-reinforcing (check this article on early signs of burnout most professionals ignore). Mindfulness offers a very simple interruption:

Notice what is happening before immediately acting on it. Not:

"I shouldn't feel stressed."

Not:

"I need to calm down."

Just:

"Ah. There is that urgency."

Acceptance doesn't mean giving up

This is an important distinction. Mindfulness isn't about accepting every situation exactly as it is and doing nothing about it.

You can notice:

"I'm overwhelmed." and still decide:"I need to renegotiate this deadline."

You can notice:

"I'm irritated." and still have the difficult conversation.

You can recognize:

"My workload is unsustainable." and still take practical action to change it.

Acceptance, in mindfulness, is better understood as becoming willing to acknowledge what is already

happening rather than immediately fighting the fact that it is happening. Research by Lindsay, Creswell and colleagues suggests that acceptance may be an important mechanism through which mindfulness influences stress reactivity. In one randomized trial, training that combined monitoring with acceptance reduced cortisol and blood-pressure responses to a stressor more than monitoring alone. That doesn't mean "acceptance fixes stress". The science is more nuanced than that. But it gives us an interesting possibility:

Perhaps we can respond to the experience of returning without immediately needing to get rid of it.

A 3-minute practice for returning to work

You don't need a meditation cushion to apply mindfulness in your day to day. You can do this before opening your inbox, sitting in your car outside the office, or arriving at your desk.

1. Arrive

Feel your feet on the floor.

Notice the chair supporting you.

Take one or two natural breaths.

2. Notice

Ask yourself:

What am I noticing right now?

Perhaps:

• tiredness

• excitement

• tension

• resistance

• anticipation

• boredom

• pressure

There is no correct answer.

3. Notice the body

Where do you feel the experience physically?

Jaw?

Shoulders?

Chest?

Stomach?

Face?

Hands?

You don't need to change anything.

Just notice.

4. Notice the story

What is your mind saying?

"I'm already behind."

"I need to catch up."

"I don't want to be here."

"I should be more motivated."

See if you can recognize the thought as a thought.

Not necessarily as a fact.

5. Choose the next step

Finally ask:

What actually needs my attention now?

Not everything.

Just the next thing.

A different way of returning

Perhaps the goal of returning from holiday isn't to get back to your old level of productivity as quickly as possible. Perhaps the first few days can be treated as a transition. A chance to notice:

What has changed?

What hasn't?

What feels different in me?

What patterns return immediately?

What am I relieved to return to?

What am I already resisting?

And perhaps one of the most useful questions is:

What do I want to bring back from my time away?

Maybe it's slower mornings.

More time outside.

Better boundaries.

More attention during conversations.

Cooking rather than eating at your desk.

Calling a friend.

Taking a proper lunch break.

Or simply remembering that your attention doesn't have to belong to every notification that asks for it. You don't need to recreate your holiday at work. But you might be able to bring one small quality from it with you.

And sometimes the problem isn't you

This is perhaps the most important caveat. Mindfulness is useful for noticing our reactions. But it shouldn't become another way of putting the responsibility for workplace stress entirely on the individual. If someone returns from holiday to an impossible workload, constant availability expectations, poor management or chronic understaffing, telling them to "be more mindful" is not an adequate solution.

Organizational conditions matter.

Job demands matter.

Leadership matters.

Workplace culture matters.

Psychological detachment itself is influenced by both individual and work-related factors. Research consistently points to workload, job demands and work-related activity outside working hours as important influences on recovery.

Mindfulness can help us see what is happening more clearly.

Sometimes what we see is an internal habit that we can change.

Sometimes what we see is a boundary we need to set.

And sometimes what we see is a system that needs to change.

Those are different problems.

They require different responses.

Coming back is another moment of practice

The return from holiday can feel like the moment mindfulness disappears. Work gets busy again. The calendar fills up. The notifications return. But perhaps this is exactly where practice becomes relevant.

Mindfulness isn't only about sitting quietly when nothing is demanding our attention. It is also about noticing what happens when something is demanding our attention.

The first email.

The difficult conversation.

The unexpected request.

The feeling of being behind.

The impulse to rush.

These are all opportunities to notice.

And sometimes, noticing is enough to create a little space between what we experience and what we do next. You don't need to return from holiday as a completely different person. Maybe you can simply return with a little more awareness. And from there, choose what you want to carry forward.

A final question

What is one quality from your time away that you'd like to bring into the way you work?

Not as another goal.

Just as something to notice.

Research & further reading

• de Bloom et al. (2009), Do We Recover from Vacation? Meta-analysis of Vacation Effects on Health and Well-being 

• Wendsche & Lohmann-Haislah (2017), A Meta-Analysis on Antecedents and Outcomes of Detachment from Work 

• Karabinski et al. (2021), Interventions for improving psychological detachment from work: A meta-analysis 

• Reis et al. (2024), Mindfulness and cognitive-behavioral strategies for psychological detachment 

• Lindsay et al. (2018), Acceptance lowers stress reactivity