It’s easy to be distracted this time of year and take our minds off our jobs and careers. That’s not a bad thing but there’s still the reality that its year-end and there are loose ends to tie up. And of course, we want our organizations to get their money’s worth from us no matter what time of year it is.
Recognize that your personal and work lives can coexist without sacrificing your effectiveness. Take it as a challenge to integrate the holiday sentiments of generosity, compassion, and family into your workday without bringing progress to a crawl.
Those little things.
I don’t have an illusion that anyone is one-dimensional but it’s particularly enjoyable to see the personalities of normally timid co-workers blossom when they share their once-a-year-made baked goods in the breakroom. Stoic modesty is thrown aside in the presence of grandma’s molasses cookie recipe.
When staff are shooting off to the airport at all hours to retrieve relatives, reaching them, our vendors, and clients is more challenging. It’s easiest (and better for us) to relax about these things rather than let them add to our stress levels. The flip side of seeing others make airport runs for those who have lost loved ones or who are separated their kids can make it a very difficult time for them. You’ll want to give them the space that they need but know that buckling down on their work when others are feeling connected can help bring them the sense of fulfillment and solace.
Got Backlog?
Collection efforts toward foot-dragging accounts can be more effective when approached with compassion. While we know that all year-long, understanding where others come from and the situations they are in can ease conversations and make payment plans more realistic.
Some of your team (and maybe yourself as well) will be searching for webinars to earn those last few CPE credits that are needed before the month closes out. Fortunately, they have become much easier to find. If this must-do task is one of yours, take it with a grain of salt if you end up being relegated to attending a ‘Taxes for the Beauty Industry’ class that wouldn’t think would be useful to your career. Look at it instead as a time to gain insight and consider how applying similar methods or guidelines could be of use to your own business. That’s truly thinking outside of the box.
The fun stuff.
If you’re like me, you have a perpetual list of things you’ve been meaning to get around to doing. How many of us have Bluetooth headsets sitting in our drawers waiting to be figured out and paired with our laptops?
You made a note months (or years) ago that utilizing two monitors at your desk makes you much more efficient than utilizing only one. Hit up your IT staff to dust off a second one that’s in the corner of a closet. Hook it up and try it out. You’ll quickly wonder how you ever lived without having a second screen.
What about programming the memory keys on your keyboard? You’ve always thought that that’d be a good idea, even if it seemed silly to program one key to do the job of two. Set up [control] +[v] as a command for one of your function keys. It again seems ridiculously simple and will take all of two minutes to figure out. You won’t know why you didn’t set it up years ago.
Stress
When the festive tunes on musak start to get stale, the perfect gift for a loved one is still illusive, and reaching anyone seems to be a useless effort, remember that the holiday season only lasts a short time…despite attempts by retail to stretch if from Halloween to Valentine’s day.
Enjoy your holiday and try out something new that you’ve been meaning to get around to.
