Ah, summer — the season for vacations and three-day holiday weekends. These days, however, it’s harder to truly get away from the office, if only because we carry the office with us everywhere, courtesy of our personal digital assistants. But if you’re taking the time off, you should make the effort to leave the office behind and unplug from technology. You need to be concerned with recharging your own batteries, not your cell phone’s.

In today’s wired world, you may get the hives just thinking about going an entire hour without checking e-mail. But with a little advance planning, you can enjoy your vacation from the get-go, with fewer worries that everything has collapsed in your absence. Work with colleagues who will be taking on your responsibilities well ahead of time; the ample notice will give them time to get up to speed and ask more thoughtful questions than they might if you throw them some files on your way out the door.

If you have clients who expect to hear your voice on the other end of the phone, give them a week’s notice of your absence. Provide the client with the name and number of the person they can reach in your absence, and include that person on e-mails you send in the days before your departure. That way, the client knows that you’ve left them in capable hands.

Emphasize to coworker and client alike that you are only reachable in the event of a true emergency. Budget Travel suggests providing a very specific example of what qualifies as an emergency (such as a hostage situation) so that people won’t suddenly deem a lack of toner a crisis. Both Budget Travel and PC World say that the way to get people to respect this mandate is to make it just a little bit difficult to be reached. That doesn’t mean going AWOL; rather, only provide the phone number of the hotel where you’ll be staying, so that those left back in the office can judge whether it’s worth the hassle of leaving you a message there. Or, if you’re leaving your personal cell phone number behind, give it to just one trustworthy colleague who can screen the nature of the emergency for you.

Sometimes the problem is not that your coworkers and clients keep calling or emailing, but that you just can’t resist checking voice messages and e-mails. Ideally, you’d leave all work phones and computers behind, but if your work phone is also your personal cell, that may not be an option. If that’s the case, treat your device strictly as a phone — no peeking at e-mails. If you absolutely must get online, do so only at one designated time of day, and only provide a response to those messages that require one.

More often than not, however, the office will keep going even in your absence, but it’s the spare time on your hands that has you reaching for the Blackberry. Make peace with the idea of being lazy on your vacation. After all, being away from work issues, even for a few days, may give you a new approach to resolving them upon your return.

Some vacation reading from HowStuffWorks:
How wired are we?
10 Popular Cell Phones
How Volunteer Vacations Work
How can you take a green vacation?