Over the past year, I’ve managed to dramatically increase my productivity, largely with the help of a simple weekly time management system in excel. (You can see a sample sheet of a single, typical week in excel. Tuesdays and Thursdays only required two hours of work because I was in school most of the day. Readings for class aren’t counted as work in the system, but papers are.) As a result of targeting and tracking my time in various projects, I’ve managed to get so much more done this year than last.

But I still have a lingering problem, one that was particularly evident (and particularly painful) this week. I hope that others might have some suggestions for how to resolve it. The problem is that once I stop work for a much-needed few days of vacation, returning to work is a painfully difficult process of days and days. I simply can’t manage to concentrate on work again; it feels physically impossible. This time around, it was a slow and painful process, despite a fast-approaching deadline for my Camp Indecon lessons. Yesterday, I did finally manage to get some work done, but it was too little too late. (This is not a problem unique to philosophizing, as I remember having the same post-vacation difficulties while working as a programmer.)

So any suggestions or tricks for getting back into the groove of work after time off?