It’s that time of year again! I’ve got a turkey in the garage fridge (because there is no room in the main fridge) and a sack of potatoes in the pantry. The fancy tree is up in the living room, and we’ll get the live tree for the foyer later this week.
It’s the holiday season, and this week’s Best of Both Worlds talks about how to plan out the next few weeks. We recommend taking a mindful approach of figuring out what everyone truly wants to do — though of course tradition does carry some weight. We talk about what *we* would like to receive as gifts as well!
Please give the episode a listen. We’ll be gathering with our Patreon community at noon (Eastern), today, 11/26, to discuss how to curate a holiday season. If you’d like to join you can go to our Patreon page (if you see this after noon, don’t worry, there’s a recording). We’re also happy to announce that our annual goal-setting workshop will be December 19th (also at noon, eastern) and Sarah will lead us through some goal setting exercises for 2025. That’s always a great one! Membership is $9/month and includes access to our forum, where we have 3-4 discussion threads going each week on issues of work/life.
Now, I read the name of this episode, and I’m like, “I don’t ‘design’ my holidays”. The whole point of having this holiday for me is to relax myself and not think about much of, well, anything. There usually is just 1 thing that I actually need to design for my holidays. Then I read on to find out that you and Dr. Sarah Hart-Unger will actually discuss how to plan out the next few weeks, Ms. Laura Vanderkam. Then I realized, “Oh, that’s what you meant to design”.
The thing that I’ll design that is unique to the last month of the year before Dec 24 is that I’ll need to reflect on whether this year is a wasted year. Specifically, I’ll need to reflect on whether I’m facing the end of another year with the mournful wish, once again, that I have done things differently. And yes, that’s an expression that an author that you and I both know of came up with that I found very useful.
What I’ll actually design for my holidays from Dec 24 to Jan 1 is that I’ll need to always count how many days are left for this holiday. When there are just 2 days left in a holiday, I’ll need to make the transition from holiday mode to work mode. Failure at this transition is basically not an option. So that’s what I do need to design.
@Yukun – the transition from vacation to work mode is always hard!