The blog

Christ­mas if fast approach­ing and with it a few days hol­i­day (at least for most of us). If not, then at least the next few weeks will most like­ly have few­er sched­uled activ­i­ties, meet­ings, gath­er­ings and con­fer­ences. So either way we will have some breathing-space.

If the weeks tend to just fly by dur­ing the fall, then we now get a nat­ur­al break with less to do. We can make clever use of this calmer peri­od and get a good start on the new year by plan­ning ahead.

If we take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to look ahead on what will hap­pen dur­ing 2020, we will be able to get start­ed on more projects which we oth­er­wise might have got­ten start­ed on lat­er, per­haps even last sec­ond if we have not planned far enough ahead of time.

Easy does it
Hav­ing planned fur­ther ahead, we will be able to deliv­er what we do for oth­ers with high­er qual­i­ty and with few­er mis­takes. We will feel less stressed and our work­days will be more enjoyable.

Do this

1. Go through your cal­en­dar for next year and notice what has already been sched­uled through­out 2020.


2. As soon as you come to think of some­thing you should do in prepa­ra­tion for a future event, add it as a to-do-task on your list and set a due date or make it vis­i­ble from a cer­tain date which is, accord­ing to you, set suf­fi­cient­ly far ahead of the event itself. This could for instance be that you will:
   • start work­ing on something
   • check in with some­one regard­ing something
   • sched­ule something
   • ask some­one else to start work­ing on something


3. Great! Now you have at least pre­pared these activ­i­ties, ensur­ing that you are remind­ed ear­ly enough to do some­thing which you will lat­er thank your­self for hav­ing done. And you will thank your­self, I guar­an­tee it.

Get a smooth start to the new year
If you make use of Christ­mas’ calmer tem­po to get ahead on your plan­ning, then your 2020 will be at least slight­ly less stress­ful than 2019. You will have more time to reflect on where you are now and where you are head­ing, and more time to do what tru­ly mat­ters to you.

How do you get ahead of yourself?
What is your way of get­ting ahead of your­self and plan for next year? Com­ment below, why don’t you?