It will be interesting to see if you can actually stop working when the moment comes.

Let’s be honest now. You and I have struggled to keep going the last couple of weeks; a mixture of fatigue (why now?? see last post), social and environmental hypnotic suggestion (twinkly Christmas effect – technical term) and a raft of business reasons have made it very tricky to keep the productivity machine from stalling altogether. But the day is approaching when we are actually going to have to stop ourselves checking our various electronic devices for updates, actions and trouble; we are going to need to divert our attentions to our own, personal lives. But like a sick dog who isn’t permitted to eat but habitually sniffs it’s bowl anyway, we will both, you and I, have to find ways stop sniffing the empty work bowl for 10 days.

Habit is one thing and wish is quite another. A habit can dry up quite quickly, in the space of 40-50 experiences, even quite close together. So if you do glance at your Blackberry or iPhone and then realise that there is no real need, you may not have to go through this ritual many times before you notice that you are doing it less and less within a day or two. The point here is not so much can I stop the habit but do I have something better (more engaging) to do? Something that brings me a stronger (nicer) feeling than the little kick that I get from checking my mail/voicemail to see if I have received good news or a lack of bad. That part is of course a matter of personal choice. We can each choose to fill our heads with what is happening right now or to worry about what we left behind (unfinished tasks and troubles) and what is coming up next on the 3rd of January (more tasks and trouble).

The challenge for busy people is to exist in the present whilst creating outcomes for the future; to do what we are supposed to be doing now and not what we were supposed to be doing yesterday or what we should be doing tomorrow. Whenever you have decided to stop work, your new ‘To-do’ is to work at doing the present well – keeping your head in the now as the saying goes.

This thing about concentrating on living the day, the experience, the moment is the most obvious recipe for returning to work as happy and rested as possible. Not to mention the most obvious way to ensure that you have something to give, beyond your physical presence to the people around you during the few days that you have at your disposal.

Bottom line: just as you and I can choose how, when and how well to work, we can choose to make a really fine job of switching off and having a great holiday season – even if we must at first work at it.

My best wishes.