Avoid an End-of-the-Year Productivity Slump

Posted: November 05, 2013

The end of the year can bring on many tasks that need to be completed. Arranging meetings and working around other people's schedules can be discouraging. Plan ahead to keep from finding yourself in a year-end slump.

Mike Brown, founder of The Brainzooming Group, shares tips on how to avoid productivity challenges that often happen at the end of the year.

Halloween signals the start of the year-end holiday season. Thanksgiving is close behind (in the US), followed by Christmas and Hanukkah in December. During this time every year, many people plan and take year-end vacations – often starting in early December – to get their “use it or lose it” personal time off out of the way.

For many years in my career, year-end meant planning January kickoff meetings. Some kickoff meetings were small, but often, we were planning several thousand person, weeklong kickoff meetings in Las Vegas. When planning these January kickoff meetings, many vacation days went unused since we continued working while much of the rest of the business world was on vacation. To make progress, we had to continually work around co-workers, advertising agency partners, and other external support people who were unavailable to address critical meeting planning needs.

To compensate, we did plenty of strategic thinking to anticipate when and where we would need help from people who might not be available later in the year.

Read entire article Strategic Thinking – 5 Planning Tips for Avoiding Year-End Productivity Challenges on Brainzooming.