Toward the end of last year, my work was going swimmingly. I had completed an ambitious journey from Jerusalem to Baghdad and had come home pretty revved up. The hours of the day vanished. At night, I was delightfully sleepless, and morning couldn't come quickly enough, so eager was I to get back to my work.

Then I went on vacation to my South African wife's native land. As usual, I brought work along. It's not a workaholic compulsion; I have sound reasons, namely that I like what I do, which involves travel anyway and requires me to find interesting topics to write about as I go. Also, the more work I get done, the more I can afford to be away.

It was the holiday season, we were all together, and the southern hemisphere's warm air and colors were a welcome contrast to the gray northern winter we'd left. Any sense of urgency melted in the summer sun, and as the trip drew to a close, I tallied all the work I'd managed to get done, which amounted to, roughly speaking. . .none. My wife reassured me. "You'll get back into the swing of things when we get home," she said.

When we got home, it was a particularly cold and dreary January, and more unproductive days followed. At the café I frequent enough to know the drinking habits and newspaper section preferences of other regulars, my hebetude, or theirs, was as catching as the winter flu. A few times I heard other people using the phrase about "getting back into the swing of things."
It seemed to be taking a while for all of us.

Re-habituating

"Everyone goes into slumps," says Mark Victor Hanson, coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and more recently of The One-Minute Millionaire. "And sometimes you just have to stop your body to let your spirit catch up. I just went to Hawaii for a week to rest. It takes three days just to get out of hyper warp speed that I operate in, and when I come back, I'm in Polynesian paralysis. The only way I can get out of it is to have something titillating to come back to."

There are different ways of looking at these post-vacation blues. On one hand, it can be an expected reaction to coming back into a less-fun daily routine, which on returning home is likely to be even more laden with hum-drum than usual. The fridge is empty, the laundry is full. There's mail-by-the-pound to be sorted, and often, if you're like me, at least one piece in the pile that's cause for aggravation. Life has slowed down; you have to get back up to speed.

"You've lost ground in your normal routine and you have to find a way to make it up," says Bonnie St. John, a former Olympian and author of Succeeding Sane: Making Room For Joy In A Crazy World. "So you have three factors working against you: a worse time crunch, the loss of habit, and the third classic problem--that you'd just rather still be at the beach."

There could be other simple, easy-fix explanations as well. Krista Kurth, co-owner, along with Suzanne Adele Schmidt, of Renewal Resources, a Potomac, MD-consultancy for individual and organizational motivational issues, says a lot of people just don't take enough time off.

"They often don't take their full vacation," says Kurth. "They work while they're away or they only take a portion of the time they've been allotted. So when they get back, they have a lingering sense that they didn't quite get enough."

Lack of motivation, or more?

The lack of motivation can signal more serious things, too. It could stem from the habits you're currently in or the way you're living. "If our lives are one-dimensional, after we have a bit of fun it's hard to jump back in," says Kurth. "Some people go away and realize they're exhausted and can't maintain the pace they've been living at. They don't realize how tired they are until they stop going."

Sluggish enthusiasm can also signal depression. People look to the vacation as a cure, and when it's over they're facing the same malaise. They don't want to get back to work from which they've become alienated.

"It may be that you don't have meaningful work," says Kurth. "If it's not in line with your values, you may not feel you're making the contribution you want to. If the work is feeding your spirit, it's easy to get motivated again, even after a long vacation."

After selling his Toronto advertising firm to the London-based Satchi & Satchi, hard-charging Jim Hayhurst, Sr., went on a life-changing vacation: he climbed Mount Everest. His book, Where Have I Gone Right? The Right Mountain Guide to Getting the Job and Life You Want is the result of the experience, which Hayhurst says led him back to the importance of figuring out what really mattered to him.

"Figure out who you are before you figure out what you're going to do," Hayhurst advises. "If I ask people what their core interests and values are, 99.9 percent of people can't do it. I then ask if they have stress or feel burn-out, and if the answer is yes, I would say there's a connection between not knowing who you are and feeling burned out."

Coping strategies
Here are the motivational experts' suggestions to help you get back into your work routine:

• Schedule transition time into your vacation. Rather than get home Sunday night before going back to work on Monday, give yourself a day or two to settle back in and take care of chores and errands that may create time deficits.
  
• Get re-started by doing things you like. St. John calls it "sugarcoating": sweeten the obligations you aren't eager to do.
  
• Sit down and make a schedule of what you're going to do; it may turn out that when you first get back, you need to be more conscious about planning your time. It may also be a good time to think about changing the unsatisfying parts of that routine.
  
• Don't see your vacation as the only time you're allowed to let loose. Some of the problem may be that you're not having enough fun in your regular routine. Treat yourself better.
  
• If you felt satisfied by aspects of your vacation that you don't see in your normal life, try to isolate what worked and see what you can adopt into your routine.
  
• If you really dread your work, it may be time to think about doing something else.

Todd Pitock , a regular Juggle contibutor, lives in a cul-de-sac where his slacking is well-hidden.