Tips For Enjoying Yourself Even If You Still Have To Get Things Done This Year
Well, the holidays are fully upon us, and it would be nice if it meant we could all shut off the computer and let completely loose…
However, as most online entrepreneurs and remote workers have learned the hard way, unplugging yourself completely is not a luxury everyone enjoys. The online economy never sleeps completely, and if you are like a lot of other knowledge workers out there, you are probably feeling the full pinch right now, scrambling for a little headspace while trying to figure out how you can possibly get your projects done while squeezing in all your obligations to friends and family.
And obligations are exactly what they start to feel like, right? At this point, actually enjoying yourself for the holidays doesn’t even sound realistic.
But with some simple mindset shifts and time management principles, you can keep chugging along, if you must, without running around like a chicken with your head cut off while everybody else has the fun.
Holiday Focus Tip #1: Manage Your ENERGY First
It’s funny how we’re supposed to have MORE free time over the holiday season yet feel so time-starved when it comes to getting some work done. Do a few dinners and shopping days really hoard so many hours?
Many of the best holiday work plans are actually sidetracked because you mismanage your energy, especially when it comes to what goes in your mouth and body.
You have plans to squeeze in some essential tasks after the festivities but you gorge yourself on a carb-heavy dinner or sugary dessert and feel tired and hazy all night. A late night bottle of wine turns into laying around the following day. These lost hours, lost nights, lost days are often the real culprit for throwing plans off track.
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years are holidays where we as a culture often agree to throw out everything we know about moderation completely. This year, know when to say when and keep the indulgences to a minimum.
Or at least save the cheesecake for after work is done…
Thankfully, this is a lot easier to do once you have a solid “why” for pushing the plate away.
It probably goes without saying, but the gym and regular meditation are two other great tools for energy management that no online worker should neglect.
Holiday Focus Tip #2: Just Make Simpler Plans This Year
With all our online posturing, it’s easy to get caught in the trap of throwing the most extravagant dinners, of booking complicated holiday vacations worthy of the world’s coolest influencers, of having more fun than anyone else at the wildest parties…
Sometimes we just need a simple reminder to temper our expectations. After all, bigger, fancier affairs don’t always equal more life satisfaction.
There’s no reason you can’t still have a great time while keeping things simple. Just be careful what you agree to, especially when it comes to whisking you and your family halfway across the world and making some silly vow that you’ll work a few hours at the resort everyday.
In short, there’s great power in knowing when to say no.
Instead of going all out this year, just make simple plans with a few loved ones and stay close to home so honoring your work priorities doesn’t turn into a desperate Hail Mary. There’s always next year to keep up with the Joneses…
Holiday Focus Tip #3: Simplify Your Shopping Experience As Much As Humanly Possible
If you still haven’t finished your shopping this year, it may be a bit too late for this…
Or maybe YOU need this advice now more than ever…
Even just picking up a few last minute presents can turn into another potential workday lost forever, especially if you have to wind down from the stress when you finally get back home.
But there are simple ways to reduce time wasted on stressful days at the mall.
- Keep gifts simple yet practical instead of going all out.
- Just get gifts for those closest to you and tell everyone you just don’t have time to shop this year.
- Try standardizing gifts by choosing something really cool you can gift to everybody.
- Shop online and absolutely refuse to go to the mall at all.
One of the greatest time-saving hacks I’ve used is choosing a meaningful book for everyone on my list and ordering them all from Amazon. It’s amazing how thoughtful, even life-changing the perfect book can be when it hits the mark.
Bonus points if you scrawl a personal note to each person inside.
Oh, and most adults really won’t care if you wrap their gift at all. If it’s really that important to you, stick it in a gift bag.
Holiday Focus Tip #4: Ask Yourself, “What Can I Remove?”
Sometimes we make things so much harder than they need to be.
I can speak for myself here when I think of all the times I’ve tangled up projects by over-researching, over-thinking, or over-complicating before I even got started.
A little straightforward discussion with yourself before you begin can go a long way towards simplifying things.
Ask yourself:
- Does this really need to get done at all?
- Can any of these projects wait? What’s really the priority here?
- What would be the simplest set of steps that would get this done the fastest, without sacrificing standards too much?
- Do I know anyone who could tell me how to get this done more efficiently?
- Am I missing any opportunities for leverage here?
Holiday Focus Tip #5: Become A Better Communicator
If you spend much time working on a laptop, you know that many people have no concept of your need for quiet to focus.
Sometimes they need a little reminding…
With more family and friends coming by then usual, it may be a good time to work on establishing healthy boundaries.
Let people know not to disturb you during your work sessions. Don’t make the mistake of trying to work at the kitchen table while others are catching up and talking the day away. Or if you really must, use an app like RainyCafe for ambient noise.
Let people know you may be hard to reach on your phone at certain times of the day, and if you can, stake off a private room and put a sternly worded sign on the door.
Look, if you don’t express your need for uninterrupted focus, nobody else will take it seriously either.
Holiday Focus Tip #6: Embrace The Quiet Time To Tune The World Out
One good thing about the holidays is you may find a lot less people knocking down your door for quick business favors, and a lot more people busy having fun and/ or sleeping in. As long as you can hold back the FOMO, this can be a great time to be a shut-in.
Get up early, turn off the phone, and spend the early parts of the day knocking your tasks off while the rest of the world is still sleeping… then socialize at night.
Or use your nights to grind it out while everyone else is up partying. Even on a big night like NYE, there’s really no reason you can’t focus all evening and show up an hour before the ball drops, when the party really kicks off.
Holiday Focus Tip #7: Embrace Cram Sessions BEFORE The Big Day
This may come down to your own working style, and a slow steady approach to work is usually best, but if you’re going to do some cram sessions this holiday season anyways, I advise not waiting until the big days to start cramming. Nor waiting until they have already passed and the clock is ticking louder and deadlines looming.
Instead, put in your marathon sessions early, before Christmas even arrives.
Then you can rest a little easier knowing the bulk of it is done, and just put a couple hours in here and there to improve on what you’ve already got.
Holiday Focus Tip #8: Get Serious About Blocking Out All Distractions…Finally
Most of us don’t actually give strict focus to work from start to finish of work sessions anymore. In fact, all our online distractions have become so ubiquitous that we could hardly say we have work sessions at all…
Rather, online entertainment, messaging, and personal “research” invade the time we have set aside, turning entire days into a blur of good intentions with hours lost to who knows what. During the holidays, the illusion of extra time can make this temptation worse.
If getting things done while still enjoying yourself is important this year, maybe it’s time to finally get serious about curbing your online addictions and distractions so your focused work blocks become exactly that: clean blocks of focused work.
FocusMe has a lot of great tools for blocking out or limiting the greediest time-gobbling websites and apps out there, so you don’t have to even think about it. Just choose a few “rules” for yourself, set and forget, and you’ll instantly be rewarded with the ability to separate work and online play completely.
I cannot overstate just how many hours our users report getting back on a daily basis, or how much more they get done in a much shorter time frame.
Holiday Focus Tip #9: Take A Break And Just Enjoy Yourself!
The best thing about tools like FocusMe is this:
When you learn to partition your time better and actually get focused work done when it’s time to work… The increased efficiency means you actually get to enjoy yourself a lot more through the holidays, and the rest of the year, for that matter.
And after all, isn’t that what the holidays are really about anyways? Taking some time away from the daily grind to breathe and relax, have a little fun, and spend unhurried time with people we love?
This is why I’ve always cared about continually improving FocusMe to begin with. It gives people their lives back!
So yes, sometimes you have to make sacrifices but don’t forget to give yourself the space to live a little too. Your brain will be that much more ready for work when you finally sit in front of the computer.
Holiday Focus Tip #10: Set Aside A Night To Plan For Next Year… Before The Year Plans Itself For You
If you found yourself scrambling to work extra this holiday season when you would have much rather taken some time off, maybe it’s because you didn’t have a solid plan or a system in place to get things done in 2024.
If so, one of the most valuable days of work you can put in to set yourself up for 2025 is a good old-fashioned planning session.
- What do you want to accomplish this next year?
- What are the systems that will get you there?
- If you failed to hit the mark last year, why? What can you do better?
- How can tools like FocusMe be used to preserve your sanity online and keep you on track?
- Is it time to implement a weekly check-in, a day when you can review your progress, adjust, and improve accordingly?
With a little more intention, you can put yourself in a position to not only get a ton more done next year, in a more timely fashion, but enjoy life a little more along the way.
We will talk more about getting 2025 off to a more productive start in our next article.
