Stress-less Christmas: prioritizing is essential

Make the season more enjoyable by stopping stress in its tracks with the tips from MyLifeOrganized users. 

Christmas is a time of the year we all love… or hate? Many researchers tell us the disturbing truth about the Christmas season. Searching for the perfect gifts, making travel plans, hosting and attending parties, organising family events, as well as dealing with nosy relatives you haven't seen for months, — all of that under pressure of wrapping up projects at work and meeting end-of-year deadlines. Balancing all this can easily make you feel burnt out. 

Some stress roots from feeling like you have not achieved enough in the year, some from financial pressure from overspending, as well as frequent end-year meetings and drinking sessions. 

Recognize yourself? You are not alone in your totally justifiable Grinchy mood. But keeping up with all the commitments doesn’t have to drain you of your holiday cheer. Users of the MyLifeOrganized to-do app highlight five simple but effective ways to prepare for a stress-less Christmas season. 

1. Plan ahead

Having a global vision of the year ahead is essential. Organising all your projects, tasks and ideas into one tree gives you a big picture that clearly shows you in which directions you should go. 

The hierarchical list is easy to navigate and zoom into

MLO features unlimited Outline depth, allowing for splitting big tasks into smaller-actionable items. The hierarchical list is easy to navigate and zoom/focus into. MLO is structured to integrate and segregate home life and professional life in one application. It’s brilliant. The GUI is excellent too. 

- D Byrd, MLO user 

MLO’s real strength is its ability to simultaneously break tasks down into tree form and cross reference items with who, what, where, why,..... and any other context that is important to you

- Nick, MLO User

Based on your input, MLO then automatically builds a smart list of action items that demand your urgent attention based on the properties you specified: due dates, contexts, dependencies, and other. This way, while planning, use Outline, and when doing, use a simple To-Do list. 

2. Set goals 

Goals help stay motivated when you realize that you’re doing something for a reason and not just randomly acting. It’s easy to mark such tasks as goals, separate them from your everyday actions and consciously spend your energy on their implementation. 

Even build your system of goals, where a weekly goal is what should ultimately lead you towards the goal of the month, and then that monthly goal to the goal of the year. 

You can use the Rule of Three from the Agile Results methodology: rather than get overwhelmed by your tasks, set 3 and only 3 outcomes for a timeframe – daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. 

Focus on three goals daily, weekly, monthly and yearly

3. Review 

MyLifeOrganized has the special Review feature that allows you to get a list of tasks you want to review periodically. This is especially necessary when troubleshooting things that slow down your progress. Or determining where you need to change the way you perform tasks, reprioritize subtasks or redo the whole approach. 

Also, it is good to review tasks (ideas, plans, and paused projects) that are constantly ignored while you are busy doing the most urgent and important things. 

Got a new Inbox item and don't know what to do with it next? Just ask yourself: can I postpone making a decision? If so, hide it in "To Do" and add it to "Review." No need to set dates or reminders.

4. Set task dependencies 

Multitasking is a myth, as multiple studies have confirmed. People who think they can split their attention between multiple tasks at once aren’t actually getting more done. In fact, they’re doing less and worse, getting more stressed out. 

Don’t worry about tasks that you can't do without completing others. With the Dependency option you can temporarily block tasks and projects that you can’t actually do now. Once you complete the current task, this will immediately unlock the next ones and automatically update your to-do list. 

5. Build habits with recurring tasks 

One more important point in fighting procrastination is to turn repeating tasks into habits. Check your Inbox every morning, do exercise for 15 minutes during your break, read/study for at least 30 minutes per day, etc. MLO offers extremely flexible settings and prevents you from forgetting or neglecting such things. 

After all, MLO was created to make life easier and minimise annoying routine stress. 

My perfect Christmas starts early, in September, when me and the team start polishing our very anticipated gifts for customers. It’s our tradition to release a new major version before Christmas. And this year, despite all the hardship the war has brought to our lives in Ukraine, we're working hard to release a new desktop version and to make planning with MLO your real superpower. My to-do list for the end of 2022 is somewhat specific, so to speak, as it is filled with tasks such as starlink, power generators, and donations to help my country survive the coming winter. However, there is still room on my list for classic tasks: buying gifts, cooking, and calling people I love.

- Andriy Tkachuk, the founder and CEO of MyLifeOrganized 

Your stress-free Christmas is not a magical gift, it is a real planning process. With realistic planning and some positive thinking, you can definitely feel fulfilled, find peace and joy during the holidays!