Even the holiday season can be stressful for employees. Every year, this season involves juggling work and personal life. Buying presents for your family and friends, managing the end-of-year workload, and delivering on commitments are a chore. The effects can range from fatigue to headaches to insomnia. Sometimes, holiday stress can even lead to lashing out and medical issues. However, there are a few ways to keep this stress at bay. First, however, you have to look at the root causes of this issue.
What Causes Business Stress During the Holidays?
What may seem like a string of dilemmas and psychological burdens that get you down during the holidays can easily be broken down into a basic few.
Pursuing Perfection
This goes out to all the workaholics out there. You must have dealt with one or more perfectionists at some point in your life. They try to do anything and everything they can to make things perfect. They try to be over-efficient in their work lives and attend every gathering and family get-together. Taking on too much can often lead to stress. This stress can physically and mentally tire you out to the point of exhaustion.
Financial Challenges
According to a research published in Psychology Today, 89% of women and 79% of men pretend to like the gifts they hate. The study also indicated that 50% of people hated at least one gift they received on Christmas. Despite that, Americans spend nearly 3-4% of their income on holiday gifts. This contributes to spending-related stress.
Overpromising
Making too many commitments is a staple of the holidays. Imagine this scenario. Your boss wants a certain report delivered on time. However, that same day, your friends have also planned a meet up. That’s fine because you can just finish up a day earlier. Oh, but your family is coming over from your hometown that day! Some of you may not have to imagine because it happens to you all the time. That kind of stress to overpromise and then be unable to deliver is soul-crushing.
Family Responsibilities
Holidays, like Christmas and New Year’s Eve, may be about reconnecting with your family, but they’re also about arguments. Family drama is a cliché of so many Christmas and Thanksgiving specials that it’s become insipid. However, that doesn’t mean that it is a stress-free affair. Completing work deadlines to come home to a nasty relative is enough to make anyone mad.
Reducing Stress During the Holidays
Reducing holiday stress begins with planning accordingly. Though this is a very cold and calculated solution, it’s also the most pragmatic one. Planning is required in both professional and personal capacities to nullify holiday stress or diminish it significantly. Here are some effective tips for holiday stress reduction.
Professional Tips
Managing work is the key when it comes to capping stress levels. If you take care of your job and professional commitments, there will be a marked difference in your stress levels.
Manage Expectations
Make sure you don’t take on too much during the holidays. You’re capable enough to know your strengths and weaknesses at work. Try to working as close to your capability parameters for reducing stress during the holidays.
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If you can’t take on last minute assignments, tell your boss. If you have a family commitment planned in advance, inform your supervisor so it doesn’t clash with an important assignment.
Set Reasonable Holiday Work Hours
If you’re running your own business, make things easier for your employees. Make a basic plan for holiday workloads at least 3 months before they arrive. Plan your commitments with employees and clients so that it doesn’t become overwhelming at the 11th hour.
This will help you set short work hours for your employees and yourself. It will also allot more time for festivities, shopping, and for employees to spend time with their families. Not only will your employees love you for this, but you will thank yourself for it later on.
Avoid Giving Clients Your Phone Number
Of course, you shouldn’t hand out your personal phone number to clients. Always give them your work phone number instead. However, if you have committed that tragic blunder, tell your clients in advance when you’re busy.
Set priorities for emergencies and tell the clients what they need to do if they need to contact you urgently. This is part of setting boundaries so you don’t have to deal with too much during the holidays.
Personal Tips
Managing your personal life will be much easier if you’ve set boundaries for your work. However, to completely reduce stress during the holidays, you need to give your personal life the same importance as work.
Make a Plan a Month in Advance
All commitments involving family members and friends should be made in advance. While others may call you a ‘buzzkill’ for it, this is what’s best for everyone. It prioritizes your family before your work. This way, you can set your expectations for work accordingly and avoid conflicting arrangements.
Create a Holiday Budget
This goes back to the financial burdens of the holidays. If you set aside a specific budget for gifts, including dinners and outings, you’ll avoid frantically replenishing your bank balance.
Carve Out Personal Time
While holidays are all about forgiveness, collective joy, and warm dinners by the fireplace, self-care is also important. You must set aside time to reflect or introspect. You can curl up with a good book, watch a few Netflix episodes, meditate, or just get some rest. Small retreats from the world can replenish not only your willpower, but also your capacity to enjoy the holidays.
Learn to Say No
Finally, this is the most important factor in reducing holiday stress. You need to say no to a few people in your life every now and then. During the holiday, this becomes even more important. This means telling friends you can’t commit to a dinner, or telling your boss you can’t take on huge assignments. Telling people upfront that you can’t commit may seem inconsiderate, but it’s much better than disappointing them at the last minute.
Learn to adhere to these holiday stress reduction tips. You may end up saving your holidays and your sanity in one go.
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