How to feel motivated at work after vacations?

Is it possible to return to work feeling more productive and innovative after the summer holidays?

After a few days, weeks, and even months of a well-deserved break, getting back to work and feeling reactivated can be really challenging.

How to settle down and start a routine with innovation?

Taking a break is completely necessary when the biggest concern is defining a travel itinerary or choose between beach or mountain! The first days of going back to the office or even to work remotely can be really hard, tedious, unfocused, and even useless. However, the right transition can result in an opportunity for innovation and change empowering yourself. Here are some strategies to make fresh content in this new journey without feeling frustrations or concerns after a break:

Take a break from vacations

First off, we understand that the most challenging thing is returning to work with the feeling of going back to the same thing, nothing changes and you do not know how to innovate. For this reason, we recommend you leave a full day or two to rest, do household and plan your upcoming week at home.

Prepare your lists

Before getting back to work, consider creating lists. For example, a template email to answer the out-of-office messages; a plan for a morning routine, a To-Do-List with tasks to be done during the day.

Keep active

As you have returned from adventure, relaxing times, and fun moments, keep going with this vibe! This means, organize and dedicate some scheduled time to exercise and come back to the routine with energy and discipline.

Keep an innovative mindset

Runaway from that boring employee chair!

Apply practical strategies such as design thinking to innovate, keep creative, and adapt to change.

We help you to transform yourself in a journey of five stages where you can turn from a monotony person to a design thinker. Design Thinking is a five key moments methodology that will enable people to solve complex problems in a work environment and in their professional career.

At La Innovation Kitchen, we recommend you to take a course in order to enhance and refresh your leadership skills. Develop the entire path of change and bridge from vacations to work through our course "First steps as a Design Thinker"

We hope you get excited about returning to work with an innovation mindset!

Course content

We have organized this course to be completed in five days, dedicating one day per stage. But the progress of this self-paced course is delimited by yourself!

On the first day, you will learn about the mindset and methodologies of Design Thinking, we will give you a set of tools we call “Pizza ToolBox” and you will learn about research tips and Nethunting.

On the second day, you will learn how to use the tools: People, Customer Journey Mapping and Stakeholders Map, Rethink the challenge from the start, based on the findings obtained so far using the HMW card and develop an informed point of view about your challenge after the investigation. what did you do. You will also learn to define customer segments and design your persona, build the Stakeholder Map without forgetting any key player and evaluate the result of all the tools used, to identify relevant insights and prioritize important issues.

On the third day, you will learn about brainstorming ideation and prototyping with the Lotus Blossom tool, which will help you come up with many solution ideas, learn how to use the idea cards, and design opportunity scenarios. You will also learn how to build and design a 2D prototype to test the scenario. Prepare the test cards to be able to perform the test.

On day 4th we will focus on Test and Iteration. At this stage, you will be able to implement solutions after a Design Thinking process and build and design a 3D prototype inspired by the learning cards. Prepare the test, as you did with the previous one, this time it will be a culture probe. Then you will run your tests and learn again how to iterate, refine the 3D models with the test feedback. This can be done as many times as necessary. Finally, you will make it doable and feasible! Design a business model canvas, and don't forget to pay particular attention to how you measure the success or failure of your implementation. We want you to continue in a SUSTAINABLE project!

The fifth and last stage to complete the first steps as Design Thinkers is the Storytelling and Pitch... Now is the time for the show!

Prepare your pitch, with storytelling techniques to put a pitch video online. We will provide you with feedback.

Don't forget to talk about your process, results, business model, and teamwork. Gain persuasive skills with a designthinking strategy!

Enjoy this journey and make innovation your daily culture! Do you know more tips about returning from vacations and keep motivation up? Leave a comment!