Staying Stress-Free by Juli Shulem

Do you become flustered around the holidays between trying to spend extra time with family and friends, more cooking and baking, as well as attending end-of-year parties. Scheduling and planning skills are in high demand at this time of the year!

Here are 6 strategies for surviving the holidays:

Don’t take on any new commitments. Beginning a new project is generally not a good idea unless you had planned on it and scheduled it weeks or months ago.

Plan your week in advance on Sunday night so you know what you have coming up. If there are several parties you plan to attend, you might be able to group certain tasks together in order to lessen the time it takes to get them all done.

Prepare a gift list on a spread sheet or similar program in order to keep good track of who you have acquired gifts for and who is still on your list. Keep a “gift cabinet” or designate an area where you can regularly keep gifts for others. In order to not forget what you got for whom, place a sticky note on the items for specific individuals.

Schedule a day for wrapping and get it all done at once. That way the mess is made and cleaned up in one session reducing the clutter carrying itself all over and creating a bigger clean up job later on.

Note all the events and activities you will attend over the month of December on your calendar.  Place the paper related to them (invitations, flyers) in a folder entitled “coming up soon” so you can keep the various papers from getting lost around the office or house. You will find it again when you go to the event and need the address/information.

Make a comprehensive list of all the tasks you would like to complete before year’s end. Be mindful however of your desired outcome for the end of the year so that you don’t place too high of an expectation on yourself and fall short of your goals. Sometimes the goal set is not even worthwhile. Perhaps it has been on your list for months and you feel the need to rush to complete it only to realize it has no importance any longer. Prioritize what is important.

Contributed by Juli Shulem (jshulem@gmail.com/805-964-2389), Efficiency/ ADHD Coach. www.julishulem.com, Efficiency Expert since 1984, and author of the eBook, Order! A Logical Approach to an Organized Way of Life, www.getordernow.com