A lot of people like to melt in into their sofas or have the days pass in a blur of holiday time/relaxing, and that’s totally fine. Whatever works.

But I was always that kid who hated the sudden going back to school after the holidays (a phased return would have been nice (!)) not because I hated school, but because of the sudden major change to my routine and my days.

So now I’m an adult, I like to keep things steady over Christmas and New Year. To be honest, this year I’ve had more of a break than usual because I reached the level of burnout where I just couldn’t function. I took on far too much last year, and 2025 will be a lot more consciously relaxed in what I’m choosing to add to my plate.

Home-wise, Joe and I are a team – he does more over the holidays, I do more in the run up – so I don’t have any extra stress there. I do the organising and washing up, he cooks the food.

But work-wise, other than Christmas Day, I prefer to do something every day. It may just be checking emails and doing sales chats on Boxing Day, it may be a full day of work (as it will be on 29th with a full day of coworkers in).

The reason for this is that it’s far easier to keep going than to completely crash out and build back up again. This is true in general, but even more so for people who work as many hours as we do. (If you have the kind of job where you’re not taking anything home, going for a walk at the same time you’d normally commute, or reading/listening to a work or self-improvement book/podcast could work for you).

When people are writing LinkedIn and Instagram posts on 6th January complaining about “getting back into things,” you won’t be that person. It means you can start the year off a lot easier.

As well as work, here are some of the other things I do from 26th December to the end of the year:

Look at finances

I don’t do this a whole lot myself during the year to be honest, but this is the time I look at my bank accounts, business bank accounts, mortgage (and plan overpayments since we’re luckily still on a low fixed rate) to get specifics on where I’m at for the end of the year. This is also the time I pay any yearly personal bills and review subscriptions.

Research/buy tickets

I have a look at what’s happening in our city throughout the next year and make notes of or buy tickets for things. In 2025 I’m hoping to see The Girl on The Train, Chicago, Rocky Horror, Earnest and some others.

This is also a time I start thinking about places we potentially want to travel to next year. I’m notorious for booking things late; I don’t like planning far ahead when it comes to travel, which makes it more expensive but for some reason I find it less stressful. So far the only concrete idea on the list is Berlin, because Joe’s been wanting to go for ages.

Start my new planner

I know a lot of people are the “do a few weeks, forget about it” types, but I love a physical planner. As long as the layout is usable I stick with it the whole year.

In to my planner goes: the dates of the tickets I’ve bought, notes on the weeks where I need to contact companies or check payments going out, notes from the current year with things I haven’t got to yet, and a to do list for the first few working days of the next year. Any long running lists, like lists of things I want to buy or content to update, are on sticky notes so they can be transferred easily (learned from previous years on that!!)

Prep for friends

Every year our friends come over multiple times between Christmas and NY, and then for NY itself, so that means making sure there’s lots of food and drink. Leftovers happen until new year, and then on NYE we do a “build your own” type buffet which consists of pulled pork, pulled chicken, mixed veg, bao buns, mini tortilla wraps and regular bread rolls, with some sides.

Plan out business stuff

As well as the usual tasks, such as our monthly newsletter (which still gets the same open and click through rates even on new year’s eve/day), I like to do other tasks such as outlining a rough content and launch plan for the year ahead for both businesses. This is literally a spreadsheet broken down into various categories, and then there are four tabs because we work quarterly as well as monthly.

Set the next year’s personal goals

I try to have a mix of different types of goals, some of which are more meaningful than others. Next year some of my goals include: actually learning about the stock market properly, improving my lung health (since long covid severely damaged my organs, I need to be more proactive in healing my lungs since my brain is back to normal (?) now). I also want to visit at least three new countries.

Do year-specific tasks

These are tasks that vary year by year depending on what’s going on in my life and businesses. For example last year we were fostering five cats and the year before we were hosting a Ukrainian refugee, so those had specific tasks associated with them.

This year my tasks will be to take down The Createry’s Christmas decorations (we don’t have any up at home this year because I didn’t have the time or energy) and reset the decor for the new year/spring, and doing a massive tidy up and clearout at home to prepare for the decorators and floor sanders we have coming in early Jan.
So that’s my twixmas! What do you do for yours? Let me know in the comments.