Taking Time at the Holidays

When you run a business, the holidays are both a time of joy and a time of stress. Instead of much-needed time to turn off work and enjoy our families, we owners, managers and supervisors feel guilty or stressed for not getting anything done. If we do keep working, we feel guilty for not spending more time with family.
For me, the holidays are time to slow down, keep it simple, and enjoy family and friends. That includes our work family – our coworkers, suppliers, vendors and accounts. We use the time between Thanksgiving and the New Year to visit the people and other businesses that have helped us have a great year – to show them how grateful we are for their patronage. And we throw our own parties, both in the office and with friends and family.

Here are some ways I’ve discovered to make the holidays less stressful, but still feel like we’ve accomplished our business goals.

Organize. Since you know that you won’t be “working” the way you would during a normal work week or month, plan your tasks and projects accordingly. Make to-do lists: one for the important things that you need to get done before the break and another for what you need to work on after the break.

Communicate your schedule and expectations. Talk with your family and coworkers before the holiday and find out how much time you and they would like to take off. Work your way towards a compromise that you are both happy with. This puts a plan in place for everyone, and more importantly, everyone has helped create the plan. That means less guilt for everyone, too.

Schedule work and play. Getting some work done is great, but do make time to step away. Schedule a time for socializing, both in the office and out. For us, this means taking entire days out of the office and visiting accounts with a small token of our appreciation for the past year’s patronage. Scheduling these activities means you can spend time working or with your family without feeling stressed-out, since you know that this was planned.

Don’t overbook yourself. Make sure you end up with work and social activities that are manageable and that you can deliver on. The last thing you want is disappointment. This includes allowing enough time to account for other people being on vacation, and for your own for sleep, exercise, and relaxation.

Known the consequences of NOT taking time off. For many of us, taking time away feels like a luxury. Some 25 percent of US workers don’t take any vacation at all. But working too much makes us stupider, according to the American Journal of Epidemiology, depressed, a study in the UK, and actually hurts our chances for a promotion or better job. That’s according to a study by Ernst & Young that found a positive relationship between fewer hours overall and performance. For each additional ten hours away from the office employees took, their performance reviews were eight percent higher the following year!

Try these tips to give yourself permission to enjoy the holidays this year. Rather than feeling like you got off track because you were enjoying the good cheer of the season, you simply continue the momentum you had already begun. And as a result you’ll have fun without guilt, because you’ve set it up so your business is flowing right along. And you can show your clients appreciation – a great opportunity!

So rethink “work” this holiday season, because it is a great time to re-prioritize, remembering that family and friends are life’s true gifts. After all, on their deathbeds, no one ever said say “I wish I had spent more time at work.” Just sayin’.

Published: New Mexico Apartment News Magazine – Nov/Dec issue 2015