It’s only 21 days til Christmas and 27 days til New Year’s Eve! You are frazzled by the holiday season and you have not done much about this year’s resolution, is there any hope?
Don’t despair, you only have to do 3 things to survive the holiday season AND wrap up your 2011 resolutions and here’s how.
Step 1 – Analyze the situation
Here’s a typical holiday to-do list:
- Finishing the last milestone for a project, performance evaluation…
- Arranging holiday drinks with office mates
- Shopping for gifts…mom, dad, in-laws, siblings, children, friends…gift wrapping
- Preparing for holiday entertaining…menu, food, decorations
- Arranging holiday travels
- Sorting through all the sale offering from RSS feeds, blogs, twitter, e-newsletter…
- Charity work, donations
- Eating healthy during the holidays
Here’s Time Magazine’s Top 10 Commonly Broken New Year’s Resolutions, which has a lot of popular resolutions
- Lose Weight and Get Fit
- Quit Smoking
- Learn Something New
- Eat Healthier and Diet
- Get Out of Debt and Save Money
- Spend More Time with Family
- Travel to New Places
- Be Less Stressed
- Volunteer
- Drink Less
The two lists have pretty much the same 3 themes:
- Health (Holiday to-do 8; Resolution 1, 2, 4, 8, 10)
- Family, Friends, Social (Holiday to-do 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; Resolution 6,9)
- Future (Holiday to-do 1, Resolution 3, 5, 7)
But we seem to have better success in achieving the holiday to-do list, if we align our resolutions with the holiday to-do list, then we can kill two birds with one stone!
Step 2 – Prioritize and Execute
So as you see, it’s all about 3 things: be healthy, love and be loved with family, friends and others, making small steps toward a better future.
Below are some important dates to help you prioritize the tasks
- Start making up your gift list and take advantage of discounts! (via Gift.Love.Charm)
- If you plan on traveling during the holiday seasons, book your ticket before Dec. 10th before the fare goes up approximately 6%! (via ThePointsGuy)
- If you plan on catching up with friends and co-workers, it’s best to do that before Dec. 16th before people taking off
- If you do any internet shopping, it’s best to complete the order by Dec. 17th to ensure Christmas delivery (via USPS shipping schedule)
- Watch your diet during the holiday party season and make sure you utilize that gift shopping experience as exercises. (In NY, that means walk!)
- Many stores close earlier on Dec. 24th and remain closed on Dec. 25th. Be sure to finish the last minute shopping and stock up on food before that.
- Book your post holiday travel for total relaxation after Jan!
Complete at least 1 task in each of the 3 themes in Step 1. After you are done with the first round, do a second round, after that third round. And that’s it. At the minimum, do the first round and only 3 tasks.
Good luck and I am going to work on mine now.
Happy Holidays!
