Balancing the Holidays and Your Workload

As the holiday season kicks into full swing and we prepare to celebrate, the demands of our workloads do not take a hiatus. Busy as ever, we add more responsibilities – and the deadlines that come with them – to our plates. To-dos pile up on both sides of the work/life scale, throwing off the balance we are always challenged to maintain.

Like any other challenge we face, we can handle this! From leveraging time management and organizational skills to capitalizing on opportunities and resources for self-care, there are many ways we can take the reins on the holiday rush to keep our productivity high and our spirits up. The links contained in each section below include a range of expert advice and tools to help you get things done without damaging your holiday cheer.

Prioritize
When we prioritize everything, nothing is actually a priority. There are many ways to screen tasks to determine what requires your immediate attention and what can wait.

One of them is the Eisenhower Matrix, also known as the Urgent Important Matrix due to Dr. Stephen Covey’s popularization of this principle in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Dividing tasks into four quadrants, each with a different mix of urgency and importance, can help us understand which tasks truly need our time and effort and which ones are wasting time or creating the illusion of progress. This also helps us mind a particular danger zone, Quadrant 1, where everything is urgent and important – living in this quadrant leads to burnout.

Early this year, Forbes featured an article breaking down the system and extolling its benefits:

How to Get Stuff Done: The Eisenhower Matrix (a.k.a The Urgent Vs The Important)

Triage levels are another filter that can be used to screen tasks for priority. If quadrants don’t drive you, this traffic light color-coded system makes the signals for prioritization quick to process and easy to follow. Red tasks are your true emergencies – the things that cannot wait and require careful attention. Yellows are serious and need attention, but they are not full-stop urgent. This system also identifies things you cannot do and have to let go (black tasks). This can be disappointing, but acknowledging what we need to drop or when we need to say no (even when we would like to say yes) will help you avoid inadvertently overloading yourself. Also meant to help you stay cool and calm under pressure, the triage principle of prioritization is meant to keep your “busy” from becoming “crazy busy.”

ER Doctor Darria Long shared this system and how it can take you from “crazy” to “ready” mode:

Ted Talk: An ER Doctor on Triaging Your "Crazy Busy" Life

Optimize
Complementing our priorities, optimization sets us up for success. In approaching tasks for every quadrant and color code, we gain productivity and achieve better quality when we choose the best time and method to get them done. When we optimize our conditions for working toward our goals, we optimize our results. This requires several elements for us to do our best work: understanding our limitations (e.g., take your lunch), harnessing our most productive or creative hours in the day (try timeboxing, i.e., scheduling focused time on your calendar), breaking tasks down into smaller steps (start somewhere, anywhere, but start), and creating an environment conducive to focusing on the task at hand (maybe turn off notifications and put your phone face down).

When juggling our workloads, optimizing has a lot to do with our time and how we use it. Daniel Pink’s book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, dives into why leaning in to our chronotypes – our body’s natural disposition toward alertness and sleepiness, or our circadian rhythm – is essential to timing our day for peak performance. You can also watch his Talk at Google on the subject.

Energize
While juggling your workload can be mentally (and emotionally) exhausting, your body wears down too. Taking care of yourself physically – getting enough sleep, eating healthy (yes, it’s the holidays, but we can indulge in moderation), and exercising – is key to staying sharp and having the energy to take on the AEC world and the holiday frenzy at the same time. In addition to helping you feel better and more ready for whatever you are going to do next, exercise helps ease stress and clear your mind.

The New York Times suggests that any kind of movement helps:

Stressed During the Holidays? There’s an Exercise for That.

Harmonize
Just like time management and workload management, stress management takes practice. Everyone deals with stress differently – from mindfulness and leaning into discomfort to seeking support and embracing your imperfect moments.

These are a few podcasts exploring ways to reduce stress and restore harmony, during the holidays and beyond:

Brené Brown, Unlocking Us:
Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski on Burnout and How to Complete the Stress Cycle

Rachel Hollis, 3% Chance:
3 Ways to Lower Your Stress + Improve Your Well-Being

Simon Sinek, A Bit of Optimism:
The Wisdom of Anxiety with Dr. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary

If you are experiencing professional or personal issues and feel overwhelmed, talk to someone. Reach out to a trusted confidant or mentor. Or you can contact one of the many free support services available online for a wide variety of needs, such as 211 | United Way Worldwide. Also, check if your employer has an employee assistance program (EAP). These programs offer resources that often include free counseling sessions, stress management tools, and crisis support services for employees and their families.

With these resources at the ready, we can conquer our workloads and still have the energy and time to enjoy the holidays!

by Mary Hazlett, Tetra Tech