For many business leaders, the holiday season is one of the most stressful times of the year. While you try to finish the year strong and plan for the next, numerous events and holiday activities demand your attention.
Finding the time to succeed at work and fully participate in the season’s festivities is challenging even for the most productive people.
Here are four simple but highly effective time management strategies to help your personal life and business thrive during the holidays.
1) Map Out Your Workload During the Holiday Season
For most professionals, the hardest part of managing their time during the holiday season is handling their workload.
To prevent your never-ending to-do list from interrupting your seasonal fun, break it into three lists:
- Urgent, high-priority projects. These are projects with strict deadlines and have a significant impact on your success.
- Non-urgent, essential projects. These are projects that must be finished but have flexible deadlines and don’t greatly affect your success.
- Non-urgent, miscellaneous tasks. These are all the repetitive tasks you regularly perform, such as filing expense reports, updating databases, formatting documents, and similar activities.
Aim to complete all your urgent projects by mid-November and December. This way, as Thanksgiving and Christmas approach, you'll avoid rushing to meet tight deadlines.
Additionally, if you have an assistant, leverage their support now. They can handle most of your non-urgent, miscellaneous tasks, giving you more time to focus on 2020 planning and enjoying holiday activities.
2) Choose Your Holiday Events Carefully
The holidays are packed with family gatherings, parties, and various events that quickly fill your schedule. To fully enjoy the festivities and finish the year on a high note, schedule your personal events early and decline invitations you don't think you'll enjoy.
Start talking with your family and friends in early November and December to discover which events they plan to host or attend. Adding these to your calendar early allows you to manage your time more effectively during the holidays. It gives you extra time to finish work early for events and helps prevent your work and social commitments from becoming overwhelming.
If you receive invitations later on, decline any that you don’t have time for or probably won’t enjoy. This will help you avoid unnecessary stress.
Read More: 7 Effective Scheduling Strategies that Will Boost Your Productivity
3) Time Block Your Schedule
After outlining your personal and professional commitments, the best way to manage your time during the holiday season is to use time blocking for your schedule.
Time blocking is a productivity system in which you assign each hour of your day to specific activities. It has several benefits including:
- Giving you a clear plan for how you’re going to spend your day so you don’t waste time figuring out what you should be working on.
- Helping you see if you actually have enough time to tackle everything on your to-do list or if you need to scale back some of your activities.
- Making it easy to decide if you have time to attend additional events or take on new projects.
Here’s an example of how you can time block your schedule:
Since unexpected issues will inevitably arise, add a couple of blocks throughout the week to catch up on projects you fall behind on.
4) Work with Your Team to Set Availability Expectations
Just like you, your team is finding it hard to manage their workload, holiday events, and time off. To help lower everyone’s stress during the holiday season, meet with your team to discuss:
- When everyone is taking their time off. If there are many overlapping dates, plan to ensure your team’s work is covered during that period.
- Each person’s capacity to take on new projects. Try to spread out your workload so that no one is overburdened.
- Making response times more flexible. If your team is used to replying to all messages quickly, whether they’re in or out of the office, make email and chat times flexible so people can focus on deep work and enjoy festivities. If something is urgent, have your team call.
Setting availability boundaries early helps your team prioritize their time so everyone can enjoy the season.
Overall, the key to managing your time during the holidays is planning, so you can be fully engaged at work and in your personal life.
About the Author: Emily formerly led Prialto's content production and distribution team with a special passion for helping people realize success. Her work and collaborations have appeared in Entrepreneur, Inc. and the Observer among others.