8 Ways to Keep Work from Spilling into Your Season of (So-Called)
Joy
Picture it: Three days before Christmas and you’ve still got to bake your
great-grandma’s famous cookies, do your eleventh-hour shopping, scrub the house,
pick up relatives from the airport, and—oh yes—finish up that year-end marketing
report and field a couple of client calls. You know the holidays aren’t going to
be Norman Rockwell perfect. You’ve accepted that. Still, it sure would be great
if you could at least leave work behind this year and just enjoy (endure?) your
family—old sibling rivalries, critical comments from Mom, tipsy Uncle Fred and
all!
Actually, says Brian P. Moran, you don’t have to show up late to your child’s
holiday play because you’re tying up a work project, or run off to check your
email while the turkey gets cold. You just need to muster up some discipline and
think about time in a different way.
“Successful people work with great focus and intention, and they play the
same way,” says Moran, coauthor along with Michael Lennington of the New York
Times best seller
The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others Do
in 12 Months (www.12weekyear.com). “When they’re working they’re really
working, and when they take time off, they make the absolute most of that time.
Rest and rejuvenation are the other side of the success coin.
“You must be purposeful about how you spend the time leading up to the
holiday breaks,” he adds. “The reason most people end up working during their
holiday time off isn’t that they just have so much to do that they can never
take a break. It’s that they aren’t working with intention when they have the
opportunity—and thus, they aren’t executing effectively.”
Being intentional about how you spend your time is the heart of the authors’
message. Our ability to do this impacts not only business profit sheets but also
the quality of our personal lives.
Below are a few essential tips for what you can do right now to make sure
your days off are free of work worries (not to mention
shopping-cooking-decorating worries) so that you can spend true quality time
with family and friends.
Picture the perfect holiday. Pigging out on grandma’s apple
pie. Singing carols with your kids. Cheering on your favorite football team.
These are the makings of a great holiday season, and they should serve as the
vision that will drive you through the hard work you’ll have to get done before
the office shuts down for the holidays.
“Vision is the starting point of all high performance,” says Moran. “It is
the first place where you engage your thinking about what is possible for you.
The more personally compelling your vision is, the more likely it is that you
will act upon it. It is your personal vision that creates an emotional
connection to the daily actions that need to take place in your business. Once
you understand the link between your vision (including that perfect holiday
season) and your work, you can define exactly what you need to do to make the
most of your time off.”
Create a pre-holiday season plan.
“Leading up to the holidays, it is a good idea to create a plan for each work
week you have left,” notes Moran. “Your weekly plan captures just the keystone
actions that drive your most important results. It defines your short-term and
long-term commitments in the context of what you have to do this week. Be sure
to include in your plan the non-work related tasks the holidays add to your
plate, such as present shopping, tree decorating, gift wrapping, and so on. You
will need to be sure to factor in time for these activities as well.”
For example, as part of the first week of your pre-holiday season plan, you
might set up a meeting with your boss, colleagues, and/or clients to a) inform
them of how much time you’ll be taking off for the holidays, and b) let them
know what projects you’re going to prioritize. On the home front, you might also
get together with your spouse to work out who will be handling what holiday
responsibilities.
“All of this helps you focus on the elements of your plan that must happen
each week in order to make that perfect holiday vision possible,” says
Moran.
Resign yourself to being uncomfortable NOW so you can be comfortable
LATER. Without a compelling reason to choose otherwise, most people
will take comfortable actions over uncomfortable ones. This is just human
nature. Problem is, the uncomfortable tasks you avoided prior to your holiday
break are precisely the ones that will blow up, get out of control, or just keep
you worrying while you’re trying to enjoy some time off.
“Important actions are often the uncomfortable ones,” says Moran. “In our
experience, the number one thing you will have to sacrifice to be great, to
achieve what you are capable of, and to execute your plans is your comfort. So,
if your goal is to have a carefree holiday break, commit to sacrificing your
short-term comfort today so that you can reach it. Take care of any tasks you’ve
been avoiding now so that they can’t ruin your time off and so that they aren’t
on your mind when you’re trying to have a good time.”
Know what to do when you’re not doing the things you know you need to
do. Of course, upping the work ante prior to taking time off won’t be
easy. There will be times when your level of execution is less than exceptional,
and it’s very likely you won’t be able to ignore the nagging, guilty feeling
that drop in execution brings on. But the good news is you can use that
feeling—what the authors call productive tension—to get yourself back on
track.
“Productive tension is the uncomfortable feeling you get when you’re not
doing the things you know you need to do,” says Moran. “Our natural inclination
when confronted with discomfort is to resolve it. Sometimes this leads people to
simply bail on their plans. In your case, it might mean resolving that you
simply can’t get everything done before your time off that you need to get done.
So you throw in the towel and accept that you’ll have to do some work during
your holiday break.
“But productive tension can also be used as a catalyst for change. Instead of
responding to the discomfort by bailing, use the tension as an impetus to move
forward. When you eliminate bailing out as an option, then the discomfort of
productive tension will eventually compel you to take action on your tactics. If
turning back is not an option, then the only way to resolve the discomfort is to
move forward by executing your plan.”
Make the most of performance time and down time. As you work
toward your time off, it will be very important that you not respond to the
demands of the day reactively. In other words, you can’t satisfy the various
demands of the day as they are presented, spending whatever time is needed to
respond without giving any thought to the relative value of the activity. You
have to use your time wisely.
You can keep control of your day through time-blocking.
Basically, you block your day into three kinds of blocks—strategic blocks,
buffer blocks, and breakout blocks. A strategic block is uninterrupted time that
is scheduled into each week. During this block, you accept no phone calls, no
faxes, no emails, no visitors, no anything. Buffer blocks are designed to deal
with all of the unplanned and low-value activities—like most email and
voicemail—that arise throughout a typical day, while breakout blocks provide
free time for you to use to rest and rejuvenate.
“Again, be sure to factor non-work related holiday tasks into your blocked
out time,” advises Moran. “If you don’t, these will be precisely the tasks that
you’re either squeezing in at the last minute or end up doing in lieu of
finishing up that project or returning a client’s call.
“Also, I want to stress how important breakout blocks are,” he adds. “Even in
the frantic rush leading up to the holidays, you should allow yourself some down
time. Always working longer and harder kills your energy and enthusiasm. Even
before your time off you need to schedule time to refresh and reinvigorate, so
you can continue to engage with more focus and energy. And keep in mind, your
breakout blocks are great for scheduling the fun activities we associate with
the holidays, like taking the kids ice skating or watching your favorite holiday
movie.”
Don’t go it alone. It’s likely that out of your network of
colleagues and friends you aren’t the only one who is a) hoping to have a
work-free holiday break, and b) currently working frantically to make that goal
possible. And if that’s the case, team up with them. The peer support you
receive will be invaluable in your pursuit of the perfect holiday season.
“Your chances of success are seven times greater if you employ peer support,”
says Moran. “In working with thousands of clients over the past decade, we have
found that when clients meet regularly with a group of peers, they perform
better; when they don’t, performance suffers. It’s that simple.
“But there is a caveat,” he adds. “Who you associate with matters. Stay away
from victims and excuse makers. Treat that mindset like a deadly, contagious
disease.”
Isolate yourself from modern day distractions. In our modern
world, technology can be a major distraction. When you’re focused on executing
your pre-holiday season plan, don’t let smartphones, social media, and the
Internet distract you from your higher-value activities.
“Some spontaneity is healthy, but if you are not purposeful with your time,
you’ll get thrown off course,” explains Moran. “Allow yourself to get distracted
by emails, social media, or the latest viral video while you’re working your
pre-holiday break plan, and before you know it, you’ll be working on the project
you didn’t finish while the rest of your family is laughing and having fun in
the kitchen while baking holiday treats. Learn to isolate yourself from
distractions when there is important work to be done.”
Make a keystone commitment for your holiday break. As Moran
and Lennington explain, many of their clients set a 12 week goal in a certain
area—say, getting fit. Then they build a 12 week plan around it with a handful
of tactics like “do 20 minutes of cardio three times a week,” “train with
weights three times a week,” and so forth. But the other option is to again set
a 12 week goal but, rather than building a tactical plan, identify a keystone or
core action and commit to completing it every day for the next 12 weeks. It’s
this second option that can help you make the most of your holiday time off.
“Your keystone commitment might be making breakfast for your family every
morning—something you don’t get to do during a normal work week,” suggests
Moran. “Or you might commit to doing a different holiday activity with your
family each day—driving around to look at Christmas lights or going to a
candlelight service or working in the local soup kitchen.
“Setting a keystone commitment helps you avoid wasting your time on
meaningless activities,” he adds. “Remember, your pre-holiday break plan was all
about spending your time with great intent and purpose so that you’d be able to
truly enjoy your time off. Why should you stop being more purposeful with your
time once you’re actually away from the office? Think about the difference these
relatively simple commitments can make to you and your family!”
Source: www.12weekyear.com.
