Written by: Natalie Endres
The holidays are often seen as a time for joy, happiness, and relaxation. Spending quality time with loved ones and family has great personal benefits, but can often create more stress and chaos in our already busy lives. During the holidays, your personal life can seem like a full-time job all on its own. From the countless holiday parties, you’re required to attend to the long travel days to see relatives, fitting in time for work can be stressful.
The great amounts of time, money, and energy that accompany the holidays turn a joyous couple weeks into a balancing act. Recognizing these upcoming stressors allows employees to successfully plan and prioritize work deadlines, social events, and personal time to happily make it to January first. Follow these three tips to decrease holiday stress while still maximizing productivity.
“How-To” Tips For Balancing The Holidays and Work
Be Honest With Yourself
Recognize that you can’t do it all, although many of us wish we could. Taking on too many tasks at once only increases your stress and decreases the quality of work. Rather than racing to get everything done in a day, take a moment to be realistic. Can you work an eight hour day, do all of your holiday shopping, and clean your entire space in a day? Probably not. At least not happily. If your to-do list is starting to run a mile long, take a couple of minutes to review it and decide what is most important. By prioritizing the essential events, you can feel more confident and relaxed about taking that much needed personal time.Delegate Tasks
Your loved ones care about your health and happiness. Use this support system to pass off the small tasks, such as baking that pecan pie, wrapping the presents, or running those last-minute errands, so you can focus on what is important to you. Your spouse, parents, siblings, or kids all make for great resources for both a helping hand and emotional support. Prioritize the things that you must do and leave the rest for your support system. It’s important to have a good balance of personal and professional obligations to fully maximize productivity, satisfaction, and overall happiness. Allow your friends and family to help.
Stay In The Present
Rather than constantly looking ahead, focus on what is coming up in the current day. Having the mindset that everything will be better after the holidays prevents you from practicing essential stress management skills and often leads to disappointment. While you may be physically there, make sure you are mentally present as well. Don’t miss out on holiday traditions or time with loved ones because you are stressing about impending deadlines or tomorrow’s tasks. Having the emotional control to separate your personal and professional life can make all the difference.
While scheduling your time is important, understand that nothing happens on the timeline you expect it to. Flexibility is the key to staying fully present for that family game night or work shift. Once committed to your current task, let go of outside distractions to maintain that healthy work-life balance.
