With Christmas just a week away and New Year’s Day so soon thereafter, now is a good time to talk about the different ways that home – based professionals approach their work during the holiday season. There is no real right or wrong way to go about it, it is more about figuring out what your “holiday work style” is, planning for it, and embracing it. After all, you are who you are and your holiday work style is an extension of what makes you, well, you. To attempt to force it into submission so that you can do what you think you ought to do is a surefire way to dampen your holiday spirit.
Home – based professionals are not the only workers who have a “holiday work style”. Employees at companies everywhere are experiencing what the atmosphere of their workplace is like during the holiday season. Some places are very festive, with parties and cookie swaps aplenty. Others have less official merrymaking yet an air of “it can get done whenever” seems to permeate the entire workplace. Some management teams are sure to remind their employees that holiday or no holiday, their noses are still to be glued to the grindstone while others (either by example or by giving permission explicitly) suggest that it is okay to ease up on the pace a little bit because you all have worked so hard all year.
Fortunately, home – based professionals are in the position to be able to (for the most part) integrate their own feelings about working during the holiday season into their work practices. For example, I am not exactly what you would call a Grinch but I’m not super festive either. I’ve scheduled my work load for this month to be the same as all of the others, and I feel no pain because of that. I don’t have a ton of holiday activities on my plate this year, but I am able to accommodate everything that I want to do as far as visiting family, baking cookies, and the like. This will likely change as our family grows and as the children become involved with school and community activities but for now, it’s business as usual during the holidays. Since it is my choice to do it this way, I’m happy.
Other people have many activities that are important to them at this time of year. Some make plans months in advance to scale back their work load so that other activities can take center stage. From parties to Christmas pageants and volunteering to baking, crafting, and decorating they design a work and family schedule that enables them to fit in every last bit of holiday fun that they desire. I can imagine that they, too, are very satisfied when the season goes as planned and all work and leisure activities are successfully completed.
There are a lot of people who fall somewhere in between business as usual and business lite during the holidays. What is your “holiday business style”?
Photo by bosela on morguefile.com.