Project Holiday 2019

Using your workplace skills to help plan a seamless trip away.

Is the holiday blues beginning to weigh on you? Just a few weeks in from winter break and work stress levels are already creeping up. The New Year brings resolutions to meet personal and work goals, but it also comes with year-end reports and planning and organisational changes, with tax deadlines adding to the pressure to perform. And it’s not just that we feel stressed, a Mental Health Foundation survey of 4,500 people found that for 34 percent of millennials, work stress affects their performance.

It’s no wonder, then, that I, like many millennials, am trying to escape the winter blues. What better way than to start planning a summer holiday? The prospect of hours spent under the sun can brighten even the gloomiest winter day. Fortunately, the tools that help you organise, revise, and share documents in the office are equally good for gathering information and making personal plans.

Using office tools for both work and play

Every year, my family of 15 travels from their homes all across Europe to gather for a summer holiday. Last year we went to Portugal; this year our sights are on Morocco. We start planning early, when the winter deals make the adventure more affordable. Still, when you’re coordinating travel for a group that size, it’s easy to slip from holiday planning fun to a logistics nightmare.

Our group of parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews spans a range of age groups and interests, so planning requires some major collaboration. I start it all off by listing a few links on a shared document, my brothers and sister weigh in, and my parents chime in with some questions. With so many variables to consider—travel dates, potential locales and day trips, airfares, and budgets—tools like Adobe Document Cloud make the process more manageable and accessible for everyone.

Document Cloud tools give us a shared space for commenting in real time. There’s no need to send email attachments or worry about version control; we can literally stay on the same page about destinations, airfares, and group day trips, while everyone can also plan their own individual escapes.

What’s more, while using my office productivity tools and skills to avoid the holiday blues, I am also sharing my document management skills with my family members. Today’s work environment requires teams to work collectively on the same project from wherever they are, so we all need to be familiar with the tools and techniques that make this possible.

This connectivity also offers flexibility. Although ideally you won’t be worrying about work while on holiday, it is helpful to know you can support your team while you’re away. You can spend the day kayaking or sunning at the beach, confidant that you can check in anytime using Document Cloud to review and comment on documents, or Adobe Sign to sign off on your team’s travel arrangements or contracts. ( E-signatures are 21 times more expedient than traditional printed documents.)

Keeping in sync, on multiple levels

It’s always hard to say goodbye to family, but after a satisfying holiday, the tools let me easily slip back into the workplace. I can even get a head start on my way home. While on the plane, I can review potential candidates to interview and onboard over the next few weeks, or brainstorm ideas with my team for making the latter half of 2019 a great success.

And in the meantime, I’m also planning the perfect getaway for my friend’s bridal party in Ibiza. A quick glance lets me know which bridesmaids paid their part of the deposit and made reservations. What better way to say buena suerte?

To learn more about how digital tools can help simplify and organise your personal and professional endeavors, check out Approval Adventure and Adobe Acrobat DC.