I’m publishing this at the beginning of December. It will be shared alongside the regular monthly review and planning prompts in my newsletter. The prompts talk more about reviewing and planning your writing. You can access those here.
Planning December is different from other months for most of my readers and clients. There is probably a transition from regular weekly teaching into grading and possibly out of the semester altogether.
There will be some kind of break, during which the university might be officially closed. There may be a longer period before you start teaching again.
You may celebrate something towards the end of this month, which means there is an increase in your personal to-do list.
You have probably dropped some balls with regards to research, writing, and other never-as-urgent-as-teaching work projects and hope to pick those back up.
You are tired. Really tired.
There is also a lot of cultural focus on finishing things before the end of the calendar year and planning your new calendar year.
This is not the end/beginning of your year.
I encourage you to start your Academic Writing Year in July to disentangle your writing year from your institution’s teaching year, and from the general cultural focus on the calendar year.
If you live in Australia, New Zealand or other southern hemisphere country in which your academic year roughly lines up with the calendar year, then this is also the beginning of your academic writing year. You can still focus on finishing up in December, and give more time to rest and holiday stuff.
In that spirit, I encourage you to think of December as the end of this quarter.
It may be helpful, as part of that planning, to make some plans for next quarter.
Planning Q3 (January, February, March)
can help you do that.
The live portion will be recorded if the time/date doesn’t work for you. [Register here].
The rest of this post is a lesson from that class to help participants with this transitional period.
I hope it helps you, too.
How do you want to finish this quarter?
It seems to me there are 3 things competing for your attention this month:
- Rest
- Holiday celebrations
- Writing
A couple of years ago I wrote Prioritizing Rest over the Winter Break. It was partly inspired by things said in a class I did one year focused on the break itself. Some Studio members had said they feared “squandering” the break. I get that.
It will probably not surprise you that I think your gremlins want you to think that you have squandered it. I hope you can ignore them. Or even take their grumbling as a challenge to get them really riled up about how badly you are squandering it.
You may also celebrate something at this time of year. Those celebrations may be secular or religious. You may be pulled into other people’s celebrations in some way, especially if you have children with recitals, concerts, and whatnot.
You may genuinely enjoy some of the activities associated with those celebrations, or you would if they didn’t make you feel even more overwhelmed.
That said, you’ve been so busy with teaching and other things, it seems like you should make good use of this period to get back to your research and writing.
Is enjoying the holidays one of your December priorities?
Pause for a moment and reread that question. Try putting the emphasis on “enjoying”.
There are a lot of social pressures. Immediate demands from family, friends, school, etc. Internalized demands based on your long history with this season.
Close your eyes. Focus on your breathing. Slow it down. Then ask yourself the question again.
Is enjoying the holidays one of your December priorities?
If so, what could you do to make the holiday less overwhelming and more joyful?
Jot down whatever comes to mind, even things that seem impossible or ridiculous.
You are allowed to want what you want. You can’t always get what you want. But, as the prophets said, if you try, sometimes, you get what you need. So we are going to try.
Details make things less overwhelming.
This seems paradoxical but an abstract sense of having a lot to do is way more overwhelming than a long list of specific things. You can decide to take things off a long list. Planning is often about deciding what’s not going to happen.
Block an hour in your calendar to turn your abstract overwhelming holiday dread into a list, you can make decisions about. You can probably some initial decisions in that time too. Feel free to copy and paste the rest of this section into the description of your calendar event, or a link to this post.
You might start by going through your December calendar and making sure all the events are in there.
For those juggling family events, make sure all the extra rehearsals are actually in your calendar for the various performances family members are involved in, too, even if you are not sure if you will be needed or not. You do not want to be ambushed by needing to drive someone somewhere at the last minute if you can help it.
Make decisions using your criteria for “what makes this season enjoyable”.
- Which events don’t you want to miss?
- Which ones are you happy to skip?
- What’s harder to decide about? Or needs negotiation with others?
Decline the invitations that are easy to decline. Have a discussion with the others affected about the list. Make some compromises. Your kids will not be irrevocably harmed if both parents do not attend all the holiday events. It’s okay to divide and conquer. Check with your kids about which one’s are most important to them.
If you are responsible for other people, make sure you have a plan for how everyone gets to and from all the extra rehearsals, events, etc. Sort out carpools. All the other parents are also scrambling. They’ll likely thank you for suggesting pooling the transportation.
Figure out how much prep time is involved for those you’ll attend and make sure that time is also blocked so you aren’t scrambling more than you need to.
If you are doing this in the hour you blocked, you won’t be able to do all the negotiating. You will now have a list of conversations you need to have, and things you want to set up. Let’s move on to other things you can make decisions about in this hour.
Schedule time for the parts of holiday preparation you love.
Look back at your list of what makes the holiday enjoyable.
What activities make you enjoy it? Not what you think people expect but what you really enjoy?
Some possibilities include:
- Decorating
- Cooking special food
- Shopping for gifts,
- Wrapping
- Spending time with people you love
- etc.
What things do people you care about love about the holiday that you are not so keen on? Make a list. This is probably getting your gremlins all worked up, but a list will help.
Would any of the people you love like to do those things themselves? Would that be a way they can make the holiday more enjoyable for both of you?
Allow yourself *not* to do the holiday things you don’t like.
You can buy fancy cookies if you don’t like baking, for example.
My 2 questions are very useful here:
- What is essential?
- How can you make it easier?
Schedule time to do the things you want to do.
You can book a few days of annual leave between when teaching finishes, and the exams and other work come in needing to be graded. Or find some other way to do those things in ways that remind you that you love them, rather than trying to squeeze them in on top of an already over-full schedule.
Remember, you probably worked extra hours at least some weeks this semester. You can work fewer this month without guilt.
Rethinking the last week of December.
Your institution is probably closed from 23 December to 2 January. You don’t have to default to taking your holiday then.
There is a meme that circulates in late December about how time loses meaning after the Christmas celebrations and everyone is just lying around doing not much of anything and eating a lot of cheese. We all laugh because in many ways it’s true.
If you take some of the holiday time before 23 December (to prepare and make the holiday joyful), you will probably be more rested. Maybe writing or reading or some other research activity would be a nice way to spend a few hours each day in that last “too much cheese” week. Other members of your household are probably happy to lounge around playing video games, reading books, binge-watching TV, or whatever. You can also do things together after you’ve done your work.
I’m not suggesting “working through the holiday“. You know me better than that. I’m suggesting that you think about where you want to put the annual leave/university closed days/etc, and where you want to work.
Front-loading rest means you might work more effectively later.
Depending when your deadline is for submitting grades, you might decide to do grading for a couple of hours a day in that week. Or, maybe you power through that in the week of 19 December, having taken some time off before that to rest and do holiday prep, and then focus on work you really enjoy at the end of December.
You choose.
I’m just asking you to think about it.
Wishing you a restful and joyful December!
Related Posts:
Prioritizing rest over the winter break
Resting when you can’t stop working completely
