Keeping the office afloat while everyone else is on the beach

A quiet office can be oddly draining. With fewer people around, the work often looks lighter while your brain is doing twice the sorting. If summer at work feels heavier than it should, the issue is often not the task list itself. It is the pile-up of tiny choices, handovers, and “can you just…” jobs that eat into your day.

I see the same pattern every year: 34% of staff report extreme pressure or panic attacks when covering holiday leave, and 57% of HR professionals notice burnout during summer. So no, you are not being dramatic. The fix is not to become some sort of inbox superhero. It is to make your day ask less of you, and to make home easier when work has already taken enough.

Summer pressure has a sneaky look to it. Fewer meetings. Less chatter. Empty desks. Lovely. And yet the people still at work often become part stand-in, part traffic controller, part mind-reader for colleagues who are somewhere near a pool with their phone on silent.

That is why the day feels heavy even when nothing appears to be on fire.

The hard part is not always the extra tasks. It is the extra judgment. You are no longer just doing your own work. You are deciding what matters, what waits, what needs chasing, and what your absent colleague would probably have done. That kind of thinking is tiring in a slow, stubborn way.

By mid-afternoon, it often shows up in small signs:

• You reread emails
• Simple replies take too long
• Tiny interruptions feel much bigger
• You end the day tired without one clear reason why

That is not poor time management. That is a crowded head.

What helps is cutting decisions where you can.

First, let more things be good enough. Summer cover is not the moment to polish every low-stakes task until it shines. If something can wait a few days without causing trouble, let it wait. A neat reply sent in two minutes is often better than a perfect one sent too late.

Second, protect one hour for proper focus. Just one. Put it early if you can. No meetings, no Slack hopping, no checking email every six minutes like it might suddenly contain a winning lottery ticket. Use that hour for the work that needs your full brain, before the day breaks into fragments.

A simple sort can help too:

• Now
• Next
• Later

Not every ping deserves a front-row seat in your day.

Third, use small routines to cut repeat choices. Decide tomorrow’s top task before you leave. Keep lunch simple during busy weeks. Pick set times to check messages. None of this is glamorous, but glamour has never saved a Wednesday.

And then there is the bit people skip: the evening.

After a full day of covering for others, dinner can feel like one demand too many. “What’s for dinner?” is a tiny question with a nasty sense of timing. When your head is already full, even choosing between pasta and soup can feel like admin in a saucepan.

That is where home needs defaults, not effort.

A few things help:

• Pick a short list of easy dinners and rotate them
• Decide one leftovers night in advance
• Split cooking days clearly if you live with someone
• Batch-cook once when the week looks busy

The aim is not to run your home like an office. Quite the opposite. It is to stop home from turning into your second shift.

And on weeks when even the simple plan falls apart, we think it is fine to make dinner easier on purpose. A prepared meal from CrowdCooks can take one more decision off your plate. That matters more than it sounds. When food is sorted, the whole evening often softens a bit. No supermarket stop. No chopping. No standing in front of the fridge as if it has hidden answers behind the yoghurt.

Sometimes that is enough.

Work in summer does not usually wear us down with one huge disaster. It does it bit by bit. One extra inbox. One delayed approval. One small choice after another. So the best response is often bit by bit too: fewer decisions, less polishing, one focus hour, and evenings that do not ask for your last scrap of energy.

Your holiday will come. The goal is to arrive there with something left in the tank.

Summer at work is busier than it looks

There’s a funny trick summer plays in most offices. The room gets quieter, out-of-office replies start rolling in, and everyone assumes things must be slowing down.

They usually aren't.

Instead, the people who are still at work quietly absorb the extra load. You're covering for colleagues, chasing approvals that suddenly take twice as long, and making dozens of small decisions that normally wouldn't be yours.

By the end of the day, it's often those hundreds of tiny decisions—not one major project—that leave you mentally exhausted. That's decision fatigue.

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Three simple ways to protect your energy

Accept "good enough"

Summer isn't the moment to polish every low-priority task.

If something can safely wait until your colleague returns, let it wait. A clear answer delivered today is often more valuable than the perfect answer delivered too late.

Protect one focus block

Try blocking just one uninterrupted hour each day.

No meetings.

No notifications.

No constantly checking your inbox.

That one hour often gets more meaningful work done than an entire afternoon of interruptions.

Reduce the number of daily decisions

Decision fatigue doesn't only come from work itself.

It also comes from constantly deciding what to do next.

Small routines can make a surprising difference.

• Decide tomorrow's priorities before leaving the office.
• Keep lunch simple during busy weeks.
• Group similar tasks together instead of constantly switching between them.

The fewer unnecessary decisions you make, the more mental energy you'll have for the ones that really matter.

Don't let work follow you home

After a day of covering for colleagues, your brain is tired too.

That's often when the innocent question.…"What's for dinner?"...suddenly feels much bigger than it should.

The solution isn't cooking elaborate meals after a twelve-hour day.

It's making evenings require less thinking.

Meal planning helps.

Leftovers help.

Sharing cooking responsibilities helps.

And on particularly busy weeks, there's nothing wrong with making dinner easier on purpose.

That's exactly when I appreciate having CrowdCooks meals in my fridge. Balanced prepared meals freshly made in Belgium take one more decision off my plate. No shopping, no chopping, no standing in front of the fridge hoping inspiration will magically appear.

Sometimes, one less decision is exactly what the evening needs.

Final thoughts

Summer at work rarely wears us down with one huge disaster.

It does it bit by bit.

One extra inbox.

One delayed approval.

One more decision.

Protecting your energy doesn't require a complete life overhaul. Sometimes it's simply about making your day ask a little less of you.

Your holiday will come soon enough. The goal isn't to reach it completely exhausted, but with enough energy left to actually enjoy it.