Holidays are lots of things; they’re fun, they’re fattening, they’re fraught with emotion, and for most entrepreneurs, they’re a momentum killer.
Holidays are speed bumps on the road of professional life.
The most important thing you can do to stay sane and solvent, is to plan in advance to take back your life once they’re over.
Here’s how:
- Take stock of your overall routine and work structure. What can you sustain? What structures do you know are about to be blown to smithereens?
- What additional demands will there be on your time? Family? Travel?
- Take that information and plan a routine that can be sustained throughout, even on Christmas day! If you usually go to the gym, do a few push ups or stretches. If you meditate 20 minutes a day, do five. Stick to your systems: Google calendar, Self Journal, even if you just write in the people you’re visiting and your AM routines as tasks. This way you won’t have to ‘try to get back to them’ because you won’t have ever stopped.
- Don’t plan a bunch of brainstorming-planning-manifesto-magnum opus-writing just because there’s less structured work time. WAY under-promise and over deliver. (And if you don’t over deliver, so what.)
- Re-entry: Do something fun as soon as you get back! A nice dinner, a movie… this helps stave off potential post-holiday blues and normalizes being back (because you’re still having fun.)
- Have a clear deadline in place for something work related once you get back. A grant submission. A proposal for a talk. The outline for a new project. Small is fine too; 3 dreaded phone calls…
- Give yourself a day (or two) to feel out of it, but step back into your usual routines as quickly as possible. If there’s someone you check in with, like an accountability partner (or a coach) do that right away. Better yet, have that set up in advance before you take off!
