Time management: Don’t start vacations early!

Much to my annoyance, I found myself really slacking off the first two days of this past week.
I knew I wasn’t putting in a full week’s worth of work, so my mind apparently decided there was no reason to put in two full days of work either. I couldn’t meet my normal output, so why bother with any output?
This was a dreadful problem for me in my twenties: I’d set ambitious writing goals and when I couldn’t meet them (and they were very ambitious, so it’s no surprise I never did) I’d go into a funk and feel I might as well take the week/month easy.
I’ve pretty much overcome that impulse. This was closer to the problem I have with eating healthy before vacation: When I’m away, I know I’m going to let my normal restraint slide (chocolate orgy, need I say more?), so I frequently find my restraint in the day or two leading up to it disappears (and somehow life seems to just throw extra temptation in my way).
Apparently, this works for writing too. I haven’t noticed this before because in the past I’ve often tried to compensate for a day off by squeezing all my regular writing into the remainder of the week. Not practical now that my freelance week is 40 hours, so I allowed myself to do less … and apparently some part of me thought it would be fun doing a lot less (okay, set aside the guilt and slacking off was kind of fun, unfortunately).
In the long run, I don’t think the loss of a couple of days is a huge problem. But the next time I have a week like this, I intend to override the slacking-off impulse, one way or another.