Happy Monday and happy mid-July🌞

One of my favorite little things to do is track the percentage progress we’ve made in the year — we are officially 53% of the way through 2025, which is wild! For many people, July and August are natural stopping points with kids’ school breaks or a good time to take off work.

This week, I’m writing in the middle of a big transition. My family is moving to a new state, and I’m taking three weeks off work to handle all the logistics — setting up utilities, finding new daycares for the kids, and packing everything we don’t want the movers to handle.

Taking three weeks off wasn’t my original plan, but as I realized how different this move would be with two kids, I asked for more time. I’m grateful it worked out, and it’s reminded me how important it is to prepare well for extended time away from work.

Here’s the simple way I prepare whenever I’m taking a longer period of time off work:

Clicking Save

Three weeks is just long enough that I’ll probably feel a little jolted when I come back to work. So the main way I’m combatting that has been by creating a note for myself titled “Post-vacation notes.” I kicked it off two weeks before leaving to “click save” on all the context I’m holding in my brain right now. Here’s what I include:

Project context: For ongoing projects, I don’t just write “check in on X project.” I write down what specifically I want to remember about the direction when I left, what decisions were pending, and what I want to focus on now that I’m back.

Important conversations: I leave links to Slack threads, internal memos, or my own notes that I might want to reference when I return.

Random thoughts: If ideas pop up about work while I’m away, I can quickly add them to this note instead of trying to remember them later.

The whole goal is to help me get back up and running more quickly. I always have good intentions and think I’ll remember everything, but after three weeks of logistics, my brain will definitely be a bit mushy.

I did the same thing when I prepared for maternity leave, and it made such a difference in feeling confident about stepping back into work.

For longer breaks (7+ weeks), I also have a practice of deleting all the emails I receive while I’m out. There are no rules here — you could delete your emails for a 2-week vacation too! The peace of mind that comes from not having hundreds (or thousands) of emails waiting when you return is pretty incredible.

If you have time off planned this summer, I hope it is wonderful and I hope going back to work is super smooth for you. ✨

See you in August,

Hailley

P.S. I’ll be out for the next few Mondays handling the move — follow along on Instagram Stories if you want to see how it goes!

• Whenever I’m going on long trips, I bring out this list of easy admin I can do on my phone. These small tasks usually help clear up my phone, and then even if all of our stuff is in boxes around us, there is a small part of my life that feels calm and organized.
• The lovely Kiran Shahid recently included me in her article about how to align distributed content teams. There are some great experts in the piece so if you’re curious about aligning a remote team, give this one a read.
• If you use or created your own content calendar, reach out to Kirsti Lang to potentially be included in an upcoming Buffer blog post.

That's all for this newsletter! Thank you so much for subscribing. Reply anytime you want to chat. ✨

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