It’s all very well and good to do a bit of work to wind down correctly, and to have something in place for your first day back at your PhD, but what about the world unfolding around you? Surely there are things that are happening all of the time while you are having a break, eating mince pies, watching the Queen’s Speech and wondering whether or not the Doctor Who Christmas Special is going to be better than most of the recent series.
(it has to be…it just…has to be!) (please Santa, I’ve been good this year)
Checking and rechecking Twitter and relevant newsfeeds, bookmarking things and reading on the sly and so on – they will interfere with your break. And chances are, if you even remotely suspect that you need a break then you really do. Reducing the value of that break is only going to be harmful in the long run. But what can you do to keep tabs on articles and so on? How can you avoid missing them?
Fortunately, with a couple of bits of internet wonderfulness, you can have simple archives created over the Christmas break, and then review it in your first week back. No distractions, no constant disappearing down a rabbit hole. In the same way that you will not check your inbox until at least January 2nd – promise me you won’t! – create a news inbox to review later.