How do you enjoy your time off? Do you go to the beach? Lounge around all day? Sleep in (if you don’t, you should start)? There are many ways to spend your time off, but are you actually enjoying it? This may seem like a no-brainer, however take a step back and really think about it. How many times have you been on vacation, having a great time, except for one thing: You just can’t get rid of that nagging voice in the back of your head worrying about something at work. While you may be enjoying your vacation 99% of the time, it’s that little 1% that stops you from both physically AND mentally taking the entire time off.

To this end, there are three things that you can do to fully maximize your time off.

• Leave effective points of contact - This is very important and will go a long way to keeping your mind at ease while at the beach. Before you leave, you need to make sure that if any questions come up about what you’re in charge of, there is somebody available to answer those questions. Even more importantly, you need to make sure they are familiar enough with what you’re doing to intelligently answer these questions. In other words, don’t leave the new guy as the main point of contact for the CEO of your client company.

• Clearly define tasks to be accomplished - Even with the best people covering for you while you’re gone, they’re not going to know what needs to be done if you don’t tell them. First, you need to lay out what needs to be accomplished for you while you’re gone. Once you have this in place, divide the tasks among the people covering for you. Then, brief each person individually. Make sure they fully understand what they need to do and how they need to do it before you go. This might take a bit of time, but it will save you tons of heartburn in the long run.

• Let your clients know you’re gone - This goes for people internal to your company as well. You have the right people, they know what they need to do, but not everybody knows you’re gone. That’s when you get a call on your cell phone at 6:00 AM. “Oh, you’re not in the office? I didn’t know, I’ll just make this quick….” (read: 2 hour question). Make sure your main clients know the exact time period you’ll be off and who’s covering for you. A great way to do this is to leave an auto-message with an Out of Office Assistant. Beyond that, try to let people know in person or with individual email messages, so they have a reminder that you won’t be there.

There might be other things you can do specific to your job, however the above three tips will go a long way in helping you make the most of your time off.