Just 5 Over the Holidays, 2013

Look Back, to Go Forward in a better way.

Many business coaches will tell you to ramp up your business focus now, for this is a time when most of the world slows down business-wise and you can seize those curtailed attention opportunities to competitive advantage. That has never been my approach, for much as I love my business playground, the Managing with Aloha culture requires a healthy balance (PONO) of the personal and the professional. I prefer to have the Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Years holiday season be a time of personal emphasis with professional support.
— Just 5 Over the Holidays, 2012

I spent the wee hours of my Sunday morning writing out my holiday batching, a Take 5 and only 5 listing of what I’ll be concentrating on in the weeks to come, Christmastime and into the New Year. My first draft done, I then looked back to December of 2012 to remember my lessons learned and my holiday season successes: That reflection fueled my edit process until my holiday batch was done, ready for the action-prompting to come.

I’m a little late with this due to the Thanksgiving holiday travel I took stateside, but as with all good things which are our keepers, better late than never!

So if you’re running a little late with it too, here is some ‘looking back’ help in coming up with your own Just 5 Over the Holidays batch. In the habit of our Reading Pathways and Lexicon Morphology (Language of Intention: ‘talk the talk’ first, to help you walk that talk), here is your Archive Aloha to follow and apply in self-coaching:

1. Just Over the Holidays || Start here if our habit of holiday batching is new to you.
2. My batching always starts with a blank page, where I let my stream of conscience and gut-level intuitions talk to me. If you are someone who finds the blank page too daunting, try categories, choosing one to-do for each. For example, a) the celebration of Christmas itself, b) the celebration of New Years Day c) home and family d) reading and/or learning e) networking and/or correspondence. Categorical batching has a way of helping us be much more specific as well.
3. Be good to yourself in that your batch is reasonable. Keep it relevant to the holidays, and make it about you and your habits, restricting your batch to only that which is squarely in your own circle of influence. This is not selfishness, but a practical and useful restraint: No frustration or stress stemming from the actions or non-actions of others, and frankly, no “it’s not me” excuses.
   

   As far as Living with ALOHA is concerned, YOU are Job 1.

   Self is the feel of, and for, your personal sense of place, as sense of belonging and worth in our world.
   — Day 1 for Job 1: A Good Selfishness

4. If you are in the mood for goal-setting to our MWA movement persuasions, I have found that our newest Resource Page here on the blog is of enormous help to me and the Alaka‘i Managers I have been coaching: Conceptual Index. Scroll through the Language of Intention triggers, and then read the posting suggestion in your desired context, personal or professional. Then pick your value driver for more inspiration.
5. Looking forward can help too! To Begin with the End in Mind, these posts may be helpful if your first-draft listing overwhelms, and you need to edit your list to Just 5:

• What can you Stop, and, what Must you Continue? This posting talks about Juggling Irrelevancy, and our “Don’t add; Replace.” mantra. This year, I was sure to include breaking one of my own bad habits in my batch:
  

  Get back my mornings for me and my writing and thinking. Habit to Break and Replace with a Better One: Resist email, Tumblr, Twitter, and everything else written by others until my own morning work is done.

• The Opportunity to Reset. The holidays are such a good time for this, as a time your work can move on, allowing you to discover the gentle coaching to be found within seasonal lulls and mood shifts. A bonus in this post is a quick review of our managing/leading definitions in the context of human energy.
• Looking forward to January, I cannot remember a New Year when this was not good advice, can you? This January, Slow Down.

Share your Batch

The very best way to achieve your batch is to share it. Add it here to the comments. If you blog or publish like me, post it.

Share it in parts with the people who will feel its ripple effects. Share your family batch item with your family, and your workplace batch item with your partnership team.

Visualize the Goodness

One last tip for you: Most managers are visual people. I really don’t know why that is so, but management’s appeal to visual people is a good thing — we watch, we aspire to be more observant, we look for, we see, we get visually inspired to be emotionally in-spirit. We Ho‘o, and Hō‘imi with positive expectancy: Palena ‘ole Positivity is Hō‘imi— look for it.

So make those tendencies work for you. Visualize the goodness you want from your holiday batching with some eye candy. Think of your holiday batch as affirmations, and get them up where you can see them all the time, and feel your wanting.

I have found that Pinterest is wonderful for this. Here is the link to the Christmas board I just started for myself, for number 1 on my holiday batch, simply to “Be more Christmasy. Don’t let these magical days slip by.” || Christmas in Good Hands. If you like words, infographics and posters, this board might have a few triggers for you || Quotations. And if you have not yet seen it, here is Managing with Aloha on Pinterest, a work in progress for which I welcome your additions! || Managing with Aloha.

via Pinterest: Christmas in Good Hands