Home guests, social events, apple cider, and sparkly lights can potentially consume your time and throw your business off track during the holiday season.
And don’t even mention increased ecommerce orders, new clients, and year-end company evaluations. Life gets busier during this time of the year, but that doesn’t mean that your business has to suffer.
Here are six ways you can keep your business productive during the holiday season.
1. Stay On Task
As with any other productive season of the year, plan to remain focused this holiday season.
If you find yourself more frequently out of the office – whether you have a home office or not – consider technical tools that can keep you on task.
Electronic management systems like Todoist, Google Calendar, and Wunderlist can help keep you on track. You can also save time by systematizing recurring tasks, and then prioritizing the remaining work that needs to get done.
2. Consider Outsourcing
If you find yourself in a time crunch this holiday season, consider outsourcing the tasks that eat up your time.
The amount of time it takes to communicate with a freelancer about time-sucking tasks is minimal in comparison to the long-term benefits. You may need to hire a virtual assistant, freelance designer, or shipping coordinator for the season.
3. Leverage Current Staff
Another option is to empower current employees to acknowledge their unique contributions and take on more responsibility. Assigning an end-of-the-year project can free up your time and help your employee demonstrate his or her abilities beyond current assignments.
4. Avoid Online Shopping
Don’t slip into the vortex of online shopping during the workday. Set limits. Setting aside time before or after work to shop online will cause you to be more productive in your business and with your shopping goals.
As you know, multitasking is a huge time waster because you have to use more brainpower to shift gears between tasks. So maintain a clear distinction between personal and professional tasks.
5. Don’t Ditch Healthy Eating Habits
When in a rush, it’s much easier to pick up whatever food is laying around. During the holidays, trays of cookies, bowls full of candy, and rich beverages abound. Eating unhealthy snacks reduces stamina, deadens focus, and can simply make you feel drained.
Since it’s even easier to pick up unhealthy foods during the holiday season, plan ahead. Place carrots sticks, dried fruits, nuts and other healthy options in snack bags and then keep them on hand throughout the day.
6. Sleep Well
Business owners might have liberties others don’t, but you can still fall prey to burnout – probably even more so. End-of-year stress can lead to sleep deprivation, and lack of sleep can cause emotional imbalance, delirium, waning creativity, and nodding off while attempting to work.
Simply put, sleep deprivation cuts into your productivity. To remain efficient this time of year, make sure you get enough sleep and take naps when needed.
By keeping first things first this holiday season, your business will continue to run efficiently and you’ll avoid burnout.
Over to you – how will you instill productivity in light of all the festivities happening in the office?