Getting Back To Normal After A Vacation

Vacation is for spending much deserved relaxing time doing whatever one's heart desires. If a vacation is successful, it can feel a lot like the ultimate bliss. However, vacations, sadly, do not last forever and getting back into the swing of reality can be difficult, very difficult.

Here's the trick to making the transition back a little bit easier. 

I recommend having a day of recovery. Now before you say I'm on the crazy train for suggesting cutting vacation a day short, don't think of it as a day short of vacation, but rather as a day-after-vacation-lazy-day.

For example, if you have to go back to work on Monday, take Sunday as a recovery day. Don't fill it with seeing your coworkers, neighbors or friends, you can see them tomorrow. Just take some time to yourself. I make my recovery days movie days. What better way to spend a day than to catch up on all the movies you've missed out on. Need to find a Redbox to rent movies? Redbox it!

Also, make sure you try to eat regularly and get up close to the time you normally would. This helps your body get back into the normal routine.

This past week was my vacation week, so Sunday will be a great lazy-movie day for me.


By the time Monday morning rolls around, you'll be a little bit more ready to take on reality.

That doesn't mean you can't start dreaming for the next vacation though! :) 

Take a Look At Your Diet

It is a scary moment when you open your fridge and you realize you can't remember where the heck all your food went. One tip for this is to simply write down what you eat every day. There are multiple benefits to this food diary approach and you never know, it might be pretty eye opening to find out just what you're all eating! 

So what is the motivation to use a food diary, besides to monitor your refrigerator? One of the reason's I use a food diary is to monitor my gluten intolerance. For some people, like myself, there are certain foods you just can't eat. If you're first starting the process of finding out just what foods those are, again like me, having a food diary can help pin point what foods you're body can't use. 

A few other reasons to use a food diary: 

• Find out how much you're eating a week! Make sure it's a healthy amount, not too much or not too little. 
• Finding out where you can add some variety to your diet.
• Analyze your eating times. It can be really eye opening to find out when you eat during the day. Maybe there's some links between eating time and productivity?

But there are so many more reasons! You just have to find out what your reason is. Use it as a motivation to get where you want to be in your healthy lifestyle. 

It's easy to start a food diary, too. First of all, my recommendation is to start the food diary in your handy dandy planner that we talked about a few blog posts ago. This way you don't have to have multiple notebooks that you carry around with you throughout the day. If your planner is always with you, then you'll never have to forget to write down what you have. 

The food diary lay out:

1. Write the time when you eat. This can come in handy if you're analyzing your food eating patterns. 

2. Write down what it is that you're eating. Even if it's just a candy bar

3. Keep your morning, afternoon and night meals separated out. I recommend writing them in different colors or keeping a line between intervals of the day (ex: 6 am - 12 pm, 12 pm - 6 pm, 6 pm - 12 am, 12 am - 6 am)

4. At the end of the week, tally it up. Revisit what you ate and evaluate your weekly diet.

To evaluate, ask yourself some questions:

     What are you eating? 

     Are there things you can cut out or are there certain food groups you should be eating more of? 

     How much is healthy and how much is unhealthy?

     What do you want to change about it?

My challenge for you this week: Take a go at it. Try writing in your food diary for a week and see what revelations you might find from your eating habits. Share your experience with me on Twitter at @life_ceo. 

You've Got Mail!

In this crazy digital world, it can be incredibly hard to keep your online presence organized. People have multiple social media networks, multiple virtual address books, and not to mention all the fluffy pictures and videos that we tag and save on our cloud space.

I have witnessed, as I am sure many of you have, the horrifying email inbox that has 3,045 some unread emails and countless pages of read emails that have long been forgotten. The average email inbox has become the digital black hole where information is lost. It can seem impossible to organize your email, but alas, there is in fact a way with Google's Gmail!

Gmail is Google's prodigy and it runs just as clean as Google's search engine. If haven't already transferred your email over to Gmail, I definitely recommend it. Not only is Gmail very easy to learn, but it can be very easy to transfer current contacts and emails over to your Gmail account. The compatibility with other email sources is also pristine. If you use Outlook, it can be very easy to access your Gmail account through your Outlook system. For more information on this merger, About.com has a great step by step process of setting up everything.

OK, back to organizing. One of the best settings in Gmail happens to be the ultimate online organization tool. Gmail has the power to automatically filter your incoming emails into separate folders based on folder topics of your choice.

Here is how to set up filters in Gmail

1. On the Inbox page in the right hand corner by your name, there is a drop down button that allows you to choose your theme, settings, or access help. We want the settings button.









2. The settings tab gives you a lot of options to chose from. We want the filters tab.


3. At the very bottom of the filters page is the "create a new filter" button. This is where you create the filters.

4. Creating filters is completely personalized. You can choose if you want to filter by email address, who it was to, keywords or subject titles

5. After you have chosen the source of your filter, you chose where to send it to. These options include sending it to a folder (recommended), automatically read and many more.








6. Finally, after you create your filter it is stored in the filter gallery. This is where you can edit, export and delete all the filters you have created.

Filters in Gmail are a very useful tool to keep any busy inbox organized. Creating folders that automatically receive specific emails can make sure important information never goes to the email graveyard.