A hangover is what’s left behind from the night before. A New Year’s Day hangover is the worst kind. It especially hurts because it prevents you from properly enjoying a fresh start for the upcoming year.
Once you’ve recovered from your New Year’s Day hangover, you’ll need to tackle the hangover back at work. You know, the incomplete performance reviews, that year-end report, the calls that didn’t quite get returned before the holidays, the annual operating plan and objectives that never actually got finalized. Plan on devoting a couple days to cleaning up this backlog. This workplace “hair of the dog” will make you feel better before you get started on the important work of the New Year.
One of the best cures for a workplace hangover is to spend some time getting organized. Go through all your outstanding actions and prioritize them. Before these good intentions slip away from you, get the important ones completed.
I find that classifying outstanding actions into “A” (must get done and fast!), “B” (seemed important at the time) and “C” (best of intentions but . . .) is better than a forced ranking, particularly if you have a long “to do” list.
Between you and me, let’s just accept that you’re going to have to abandon the “B” and “C “items, so you can make progress with the “A” list. After all, the idea isn’t to load yourself down with too many chores; it is to clear your hangover so you can concentrate on the wonderful new opportunities in the New Year.
Many of you, full of ambition (or driven by fear), drunkenly took on more work than you could possibly handle last year. Now, rather than celebrating with a champagne toast to your accomplishments, you’re crying into your beer over the mountain of work that lies ahead. After spending the past year drinking from a fire hose, it’s no wonder you’ve got a hangover!
So if you’re starting yet another year with a wicked workplace hangover, here’s a New Year’s resolution suggestion: rather than just trying to get better organized, consider doing something about that drinking problem too. Cheers!