Let’s face it, as happy as the holidays can be at times, they are also one of the most stressful times of year. Whether you are planning on traveling over the holidays, hosting guests or just have a million holiday parties to attend, most people’s holiday to-do list can get more complicated than a United Nations peace treaty. But before you book a flight to the first deserted island you can find, here are 10 tips to getting your holiday to-do list done without completely losing your mind.
1. Prioritize – based on what is most important to YOU
When looking at your to-do list, rank everything on a scale of 1-10 based on importance. Then go through and ask yourself is they are important to you or to someone else. Yes, Becky Sue the PTA president may feel that it is of utmost importance that you bake homemade Christmas cookies for the school Christmas party, but ask yourself if that is really important to you. If you don’t even bake homemade cookies for your own kids, then hit the Piggly-Wiggly, pick up a box of Christmas cookies and tell Becky Sue to kiss your asti spumante.
2. Cut yourself a LOT of slack
Probably one of the biggest causes of stress over the holidays is the constant feeling that you aren’t keeping up, have too much to do and will never get it all done. Ironically, this feeling can actually make you less effective rather than more effective. This is also where prioritizing helps. Give yourself the freedom to only get your level 1, 2 and 3 priorities done and let the rest go. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself what is the worst that can happen if a certain task doesn’t get done. If no one is going to be maimed, injured, wounded, die or starve to death, then it’s really not that important. Help yourself get past the idea that every single thing on your to-do list is life or death. If it really is life or death, do it. If it’s not, do it if you can and if you can’t, don’t beat yourself up over it.
3. Don’t forget to take care of you
The likelihood is that if you have 100 things on your to-do list, probably 99 of them are things you are doing for other people. The one thing on your list that is for you is probably something like going to the doctor or peeing – since you probably have to put that on your to-do list or you will forget. The holidays are probably the time of year when you have the least time to devote to anything that makes you happy, yet that also makes them the most important time to do just that. Whether you can carve out an entire hour to just lay in a hot bath or 20 minutes to go for a run, it’s important to take time out every day to just do something for you. Remember, these are supposed to be your holidays too.
4. Child labor laws don’t count if they are your own kids
You may be one of those moms that loves doing laundry for your kids, cooking for them, cleaning up after them and basically waiting on them hand and foot. There is nothing wrong with this, since you love them and maybe feel like that’s your purpose in life. On the other hand, when the holidays roll around, it might be time to remember that they have two arms, two legs, two hands and two feet (unless they don’t). Unless your child is severely developmentally disabled, there is a good chance they can do far more for themselves than they generally have to. The holidays might be a great time to teach your pre-teen to do laundry or your teenager how to use a vacuum cleaner.
5. Don’t be afraid to hire out
These days, there are services that provide almost everything the sun. From dog walking to mobile pet grooming to grocery deliveries to errand services like Task Rabbit, there are very few things you legitimately have to do yourself anymore. Except maybe go to your own annual check up. You can hire people to deliver your groceries, cater your parties, pick up your dry cleaning, assemble all your “some assembly required” Christmas gifts, decorate your house, drop off your parents at the airport or even make homemade cookies for your kid’s Christmas party. Whatever you need done, there is most likely a service that can do it for you, so don’t feel like you have to do it all yourself.
6. Use technology
While technology might be something we sometimes feel just makes our life more stressful, the truth is, it’s not generally the tech itself that is stressing you out, but the people using it to communicate with you. When you get several snarky texts from your mother-in-law, it’s not the technology stressing you out, its your mother-in-law that is. Generally, when we need a break from tech, it’s generally the other people using tech to reach us that is what we really need a break from. Apps can help you manage your to-do list, remind you of what your priorities are, walk you through a guided meditation when things get too stressful or even call a ride for you when you just NEED to get out of the house for a while and don’t want to drive yourself. Yes, taking a complete digital detox can certainly be healthy at times, but over the holidays, use tech to help you get things done.
7. Be ruthless in cutting out time wasters
Most of us have “idle activities” that we use to fill time or procrastinate when we don’t want to do something. These can include playing games on your phone, browsing social media or binge watching TV. None of these activities are inherently bad on their own, but they can become black holes when time is at a premium. When you are already stressed out about not getting the things done that you think you should be doing, these time wasters just pile on more guilt and guilt is just one more form of stress. If you can’t sit down to browse social media without looking up to discover it has just eaten away a full hour of your time, you might want to use an app that blocks your biggest time wasting sites until after the holidays.
It is a sad, unfortunate fact that most people feel they have to “do it all”, but it’s the 21st century and you DON’T. That certainly doesn’t mean you can’t take full credit for getting it all done, it just means you don’t have to tell anyone about the small army you hired to do everything for you. Like the old saying goes: work smarter, not harder.
