Rituals to make life easier
“Confidence is preparation. Everything else is beyond your control.”
Happy new year!
You know how I love to talk about failure? Because it’s a massive taboo in the legal profession? Well in the spirit of giving I thought I would share my Christmas fail this year. Nothing to do with work, thankfully.
As someone who likes to do things reasonably well (hello perfectionism), I was amused by my own failure to wrap the Christmas presents with any level of basic competence, which led me to wrap them all TWICE. My children are aged 10 and 12 and so this was not my first rodeo… and yet events indicated otherwise.
First, I realised that I’d wrapped my kids’ presents in the same wrapping paper as our relatives’ presents which would go under the tree. My 10-year-old (who still believes in Santa) may have figured out that the same person wrapped her presents. Cue hasty re-wrapping of relatives’ presents in different paper.
THEN after a few days, we discovered that the large bag of kids’ presents which had been hidden away (badly, it turns out) appeared to have been investigated by curious little hands (it looked as though she’d peeked in the bag but hadn’t opened any thank goodness). She would surely figure out that we were Santa if we gave her those presents. So I wrapped them all AGAIN in a bid to disguise them! What an amateur.
Speaking of Christmas fails, I thought I would share my annual post-Christmas ritual which has served me well over the years. Using the same “marginal gains” approach famously adopted by Team Sky when they won the Tour de France (yes, I am comparing my Christmas planning to the Tour de France), every year after Christmas, I write myself a list. Within the list, I write out everything that can help make it easier next time.
Let me explain. December is already busy as we have five family birthdays. Plus it’s year-end so everyone usually decides to offer settlement agreements to all and sundry, and so us employment lawyers are crazy busy. That’s before you add in school plays, Christmas jumper days, Secret Santa, food shopping etc. Christmas with kids is such a massive JOB that, when you work full time alongside it, December can quickly turn into a huge slog. So anything which makes it easier has to be grabbed with both hands.
My Christmas list is my antidote to the December slog, so I don’t run myself into the ground.
This year’s assorted gems included:
Buy a first-class ticket upgrade on the way to the Gunnercooke London Christmas party for a fraction of the cost using Seatfrog. Result: free food and drink all the way home and generally feeling like a boss.
Don’t schedule any non-essential meetings for the last week before Christmas. You’ll hate yourself if you do.
Use Moonpig’s Christmas card templates for anyone who lives far away – Moonpig sort out the postage so you avoid the Post Office (I only send Christmas cards to immediate family, but have family members who live in Australia).
Wrap the kids’ presents in different wrapping paper to all the other presents and find a better hiding place (yes, I realise that this is really obvious upon reflection).
Buy healthy food for between Christmas and new year as we don’t want to eat beige food the whole time.
Ok, I know these aren’t mind-blowing revelations. But writing them down makes me feel as though I am more in control of my life, and so I shall continue. So that I don’t forget my own advice, I diarise to read the list in mid-November. Then I can forget about it all for another year.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Rachel