How to Stay Organized During the Holiday Season

With the year ending, and a new year coming you might feel overwhelmed with holiday shopping, spending time with friends and family, workload, staying in shape… you name it. Managing your schedule can be stressful and time-consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. How are there actually 24 hours in a day when it feels like time is flying and you can’t get everything done? Coffee can’t even help you to stay on track and get your tasks completed. How do you stop feeling like you’re constantly running out of time and unable to multitask?

The answer: organize.

Organization is key to getting tasks done in a timely matter; whether it be for work or personal life. A calendar or planner is the ultimate guide for you to help you track and check-off those tasks. You can use your mobile or paper calendar, whatever works best for you. Heck, you can even use both! Let’s get started on some tricks to staying organized during the holiday season.

1. Prioritize Tasks.

Is it really more important to leave the office right at 5pm to go out for drinks with your girlfriends, than to spend an extra 30 minutes on your crucial deadline. Make sure you know when to keep working or take a break. Work doesn’t always have to take over your life, personal is also very important to staying healthy.

2. Learn to Say No.

There are things you have to do and things that you don’t have to do. It’s important to distinguish the two. Planning a party for a friend? Not something you have to do. Planning a presentation for a client? Something you have to do. Saying “no” can be hard at times, but don’t forget you need to prioritize your tasks in order to get them completed.

3. Write (or Type) Everything Down.

A lot of times during the holiday you may overbook and forget about an event you planned to go to. Whether you use your smart phone, laptop or pen and paper make sure you are writing events, meetings and parties down. With holiday shopping, work deadlines and giving yourself a break it can be hard to manage everything going on. Overbooking is the worst and will only make you more stressed.

4. Prepare Early.

Waiting until last minute is only going to make things more difficult on yourself. Go ahead and plan your weeks in advance. Take Sunday or some day of the week to plan out your calendar, write (or type) it down so that you know exactly what you have going on. It will make your work and personal life so much easier without the stress of not knowing if you can commit to one event because you are unsure of another event.

Don’t let the holidays get to you. Your work and personal life will survive by prioritizing your tasks, learning what you can do, using your calendar and preparing early. Stick to your plan and remember that the busyness will be over soon! Take a deep breath, you got this!