Episode #79: How to Avoid The New Year Blues

The end of each year is a pain. We are racing to get things completed in one year, so that they won’t spill over and mess up the next year. We are usually rushing around before we head off on holidays, to get it all done. Being so busy we have zero time to reflect on the year that was. Presumably, we are learning from our mistakes. Normally we are encountering these errors of judgment one at a time and rarely can sit back and observe the lessons learnt with quiet reflection. The change over of years could be a good time for reflection and study, but the rush to finish, to escape to somewhere else, all combine to reduce that scope.

Did your year finish with a weighty burden of emails, not deleted, delegated or decided upon. That is a very depressing prospect with which to welcome in the next year. Is there a minor Amazonian forest of paper riding high in your in-basket and supported by subsidiary piles on your desk, choking your work space. Is there a bunch of fine dust on your non-work areas of your desk, you have been meaning to wipe away?

Are there various projects bobbing about in a frothy sea of work, all demanding attention, but currently starved of love and care? Are you left bemused and wondering how these people who sent you Christmas cards, Season’s Greeting cards, Happy Holiday emails and Nengajo (New Year cards) manage to get all of this done? Are you scanning your bookshelf and realizing that you hardly made a dint in the reading of all the piles of books you ambitiously bought throughout the year?

You can head back into the office during your holidays and attack the backlog. The problem with this approach is that it is a repeater and you have to keep doing it every year. Is there any hope of making the changeover of the years less depressing? What could we be doing to reduce our self-inflicted, permanent stressing? Dale Carnegie in his book “How to Stop Worrying And Start Living” came up with some very practical ideas for us to work on.

1. Cooperate with the inevitable

Accept that the end of year is always going to be a scramble and stop worrying about it. Anticipate that the rhythm of your year will peak, as the clock counts down to New Year. If the end of your financial year coincides with the end of the calendar year, then you must be focused on those things that are results related and should simply forget everything else of lesser import.

2. Count your blessings – not your troubles

Be happy you are busy and be glad you have a lot to do. In this unpredictable world, we could be unemployed at any time. Our company unhelpfully “repositions” our career by ending it, our Division is closed down, the business goes under - any number of death knells to our working life may toll at any time. So don’t worry, be happy you have a lot of work to get done.

3. Do the very best you can

You can’t do everything. You can however, do the most important things and so attach the priority there. So what if there is a big pile of papers on your desk, or a fine dust film or a tsunami of email? Most of the paper is for the round file anyway. The dust won’t kill you and the email, most of it irrelevant is like some mutant out of control amoeba, which keeps multiplying no matter what you do to it anyway. Do what you can, to work through it, but don’t add to your stress with artificial deadlines like “end of year”, to add to your woes or to impinge on your well deserved break.

4. Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health

We take on too much, we pile on the projects, we get behind, we panic, we work like dogs to clear the rubble impeding progress. In the process though, we ramp up the stress and worry, we then multiply the whole negative equation with massive feelings of guilt. Time to put some of these pain points in perspective. Is the stress of worry worth the candle? Actually, it is not, so let’s free ourselves of penal servitude to outdated notions that don’t reflect modern life with its messiness and vast volume. We attract stress enough as it is without adding to the woes we face. There is a great Aussie expression, “She’ll be right mate” which is optimistic in the extreme, that somehow it will all work out. Australians know how to relax, so copy the masters and stop the panic. Your health will thank you.

5. Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope.

To get ahead of the curve, allocate five full days in the New Year to sorting out all the stuff. The first few days of the year are relatively quiet, as most people are away on holidays. Take advantage of the lull in the storm to clear the decks and remove most of the irritants.

Dedicate three days to sorting, sifting and tossing, one day to reflection and one day for planning. You may not even want these two days of contemplation on the lessons of the last year to be done in the office or at home depending on how you cope with quietude. There may be somewhere you can retreat to for an in depth and uninterrupted conversation with the inner you about the world, the meaning of life and the coming year.

These five Stress Management Principles from Dale Carnegie will allow you to make all the end of year deadlines, for the highest priority items and also allow you to make a mental fresh start to the new year. By the way, if you can’t get it all done in the first week, don’t beat yourself up – just give yourself more time before the pace picks up again. Make this your new routine each year and plan for it in your scheduling – you will be happy you made the change.