How Project Management Can Turn Holiday Chaos Into Calm Wisconsin

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Originally published at Internet.com

It's that time of year when we begin to hear our co-workers, spouses and family members groan about the added pressure and stress of the holiday season. Inevitably, there are more items on the To Do List, more events to attend and it all can seem like a race against time.

However, if you stop and think about your skills as a Project Manager, you actually have all the tools you need in your toolbox to take any holiday chaos and create calm. Sound impossible? Here are 10 ideas to get you started:

1. Set the ground rules. Have a family meeting and agree on the ground rules for the holiday season. If you do this in November, it prevents all the last-minute guessing about dinner planning, who's going where and gift giving.

2. Create "Project Holiday". Once you have a sense of your commitments, create a project plan for the holiday. Call it whatever you like and assign clear roles and responsibilities to family and friends and set deadlines. In my experience, at first, you may have a few people roll their eyes, but once they are assigned a responsibility and realize they don't have to do everything, then they begin to get into the spirit of it.

3. Establish a budget. Every year after the holidays are over, we start to read all the articles about how much people went in debt during the season. As every good project manager knows, this can be prevented with a budget. Develop an overall family budget based on Project Holiday and build in some incentives for sticking to it.

4. Communication norms. During the holidays there is more activity, so your normal mode of communication may not be enough. If you have a large extended family, maybe you need to set up a virtual work group using Google's wiki or Yahoo groups. Then you can have a central place to post communication and updates to family and friends.

5. Use technology to save time with Holiday tasks. No time for sending out hundreds of holiday cards? Use email and send out an ecard to family and friends.

6. Create a new tradition. If gift-giving has become a burden to members of your family, it may be time for some new rules. One year some friends of mine spent Thanksgiving volunteering at a homeless shelter. It gave them all a new tradition that made them very grateful.

7. Giving back. Just like team spirit at work, family spirit can also be about giving back to the community. Instead of gift giving, making a donation to your favorite charity is a gift that lasts much longer than tearing paper off a package.

8. Capture best practices. If you think back to one of your best holidays ever, what made it so great? Did you go to Aruba? Was it a quiet one in front of the fireplace with family and friends and board games? Whatever it was, nurture what was good about it and bring those elements back into this season.

9. Be open to all cultures and traditions. However you celebrate the holidays, remember that your neighbor and colleagues may celebrate the season very differently. Be respectful of others and your understanding of cultural differences will enrich your own experiences. This is not only an important work lesson, but life lesson, too.

10. Leave time for joy. On a project team at work, we should make time to celebrate our successes and recognize each other. At home, we also need to leave time for you. Don't fill the calendar with so much that there is no time to reflect upon whatever the holiday season may mean to you.

So, now more than ever, take ownership of your Project Management skills and use them to make the 4th quarter at work and your holiday season at home, the best ever. Cheers!

Michelle LaBrosse is the founder of Cheetah Learning and an international expert on accelerated learning and prooject management. In 2006, The Project Management Institute selected Michelle as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in project management in the World, and only one of two women selected from the training and education industry.