How to Use a Task Docket to Make Managing Your Holiday To-Dos Easy Peasy [Episode 12]

Heidi  0:50

Hey there, friends. Welcome back to the Holiday Headstart Podcast. Today we are talking about how to get all of your holiday tasks done and a tip for something you can do now to help you out next year.

 

Emily  1:03

Traditions are an important tool in building a healthy, happy, connected life. This week, we have a tradition from Heidi.

 

Heidi  1:10

Well, this tradition is not revolutionary. Today we are talking about the Christmas tree. And I know not everyone who celebrates Christmas puts up a tree, but really it has to be one of the most widespread Christmas traditions.

 

Emily  1:22

I would think so.

 

Heidi  1:23

Yeah, and because it’s such an iconic part of celebrating Christmas, it is prone to falling victim to our assumed expectations, and that leads to festive friction. If you find that putting up the tree is more friction than festive, you may want to start by considering your expectations. Are you holding on to ideals that don’t mesh with your reality? In the Holiday Headstart Playbook, we have a page to help you clarify what you want from your tree and your tree decorating experience. If you can clarify your vision, it’s easier to get other people on board with it, and you can find a link to the playbook in our show notes.

 

Emily  2:02

Yeah, decorating the tree can be a real headache. It’s one of my least favorite Christmas to do tasks, and Hallmark makes it look so fun. But the reality is that it is tedious, so the people you may want to be involved in the process may not be interested in participating. Or you can have the opposite problem, which I think I do, which is too many people want to help, and they’re more in the way than helpful.

 

Heidi  2:25

If you are dealing with either situation or many, many other possible situations, I have two recommendations. First is to make a plan. Start by clarifying your vision, and then consider at what point you can invite other people into the process. People don’t have to be involved in the whole thing. You know, from getting the tree in the stand to setting the star on top for it to feel like a shared experience. If it’s possible to do all of the foundational work of getting the tree level, lights and garland strung and the basic ornaments in place, before anyone else joins in, you can eliminate a ton of headaches. And a few tweaks can make tree decoration a special experience, even if the whole crew isn’t involved in every step. So for example, if you have the tradition of getting a new ornament each year, you could have your kids responsible for just hanging their ornaments.

 

Emily  3:16

That’s how I like to play. It is have them put up their own ornaments.

 

Heidi  3:20

It’s a good way to simplify a lot of things. Then it’s a very straightforward process and you have a clear done point.

 

Emily  3:27

Yeah.

 

Heidi  3:28

Or you could add an extra celebration to the fun. I came across this tradition, and I don’t remember where I saw and I wrote down the tradition, but I don’t know who said it, so my apologies to whoever said it out there. But in this family, they would save a certain special ornament to always hang last. I think it was the ornament that the parents got their first year that they were married.

 

Emily  3:50

Oh, cute.

 

Heidi  3:51

And then they would get eggnog for everyone. They would hang the ornament, and then they would toast to the Christmas season. So I thought that was a fun way to make decorating the tree special and memorable without having to have everyone involved all the way through the process.

 

Emily  4:04

And of course, there’s always the Christmas pickle where you hide a pickle ornament in the branches, and the person who finds it gets a prize. But Heidi, you mentioned two recommendations. So besides getting the basics of the tree done before involving other people, what’s your other recommendation?

 

Heidi  4:20

Well, I would recommend a task docket, and luckily, that is what we are talking about today. So keep listening for all of our best tips for managing your holiday tasks. And we would love to hear about how you decorate your tree, especially if you have some fun traditions around that. So come join us on Instagram @theholidayheadstart.

 

Emily  4:39

Okay, Heidi, so let’s jump in then. What can you tell us about task dockets? And why are they so helpful?

 

Heidi  4:46

A docket is just an agenda or a list of things to be done. A lot of times we will write things on our to do list, like gifts or Christmas tree. But the thing is, you can’t gifts or Christmas tree. Those aren’t things to do, those are categories. If you’re doing gifts, does that mean deciding who to give gifts to, how many gifts to give, what to get them, where to shop, how much to spend, where to store the gifts before the holiday, or how to wrap them? When we aren’t specific about what needs to be done next, we look at our list and see gifts, and our brain has to sift through all of those options until it hits on the right one.

 

Emily  5:22

If you’re listening to this and you just got a knot in your stomach, pay attention to that feeling when we force our brains to sift through the whole list of possibilities to figure out what gifts means, in this context, our brains feel like all of that has to happen immediately. So now it’s all a five alarm fire. It’s an overwhelming amount of things to be faced with when what you really meant by writing gifts on your list was wrap the gifts for Aunt Janet’s family, because we’re going to see them on Saturday. That single task is much less overwhelming than facing the whole spectrum of what gifts could mean.

 

Heidi  5:57

That is why a task docket can be so useful. It helps you identify exactly what doing a task looks like and what it means to be done with it. Your task docket can be anything that works for you, but we do have a template in the Holiday Headstart Playbook designed to help you narrow down exactly what you want to happen and then list the necessary steps to make that vision a reality. So let’s start where we always do, by identifying our why.

 

Emily  6:24

The first question on the docket is, is this task worth doing this year? And that’s important to consider, because maybe you always send Christmas cards, but the last few months have been hectic and you don’t have it in you. That is totally fine. Sometimes we have to take a year off from things, even things we normally enjoy. Just because you pause for now doesn’t mean you have to pause forever.

 

Heidi  6:45

Once we’ve decided to do a task, the next step is to identify our purpose. We do that by answering, what do you want to get out of this? Maybe your purpose in holiday baking is to spend time doing an activity you love, or maybe it’s to have food to feed your guests. There are dozens of reasons why someone may want to bake for the holidays, but if we’re not clear about why specifically we are doing it, we may miss out on what makes it important to us.

 

Emily  7:11

If you’re someone who does holiday baking so you can pass down old family recipes, you need to understand that about yourself so you can include the family favorites in your baking list. Otherwise, you run the risk of making a bunch of fun recipes you found on Pinterest and wondering why you feel disappointed with the results.

 

Heidi  7:28

The importance of planning with a purpose really can’t be overstated. Once you have figured that out, the next step is to meet the minimum standard of success. We need to figure out what “done” looks like for this task.

 

Emily  7:41

Done is your finish line. It’s how you know you’ve met your goal. If you’re reading a picture book each day in December, your minimum standard of success might be to have a seasonal book ready to be read each day. Wrapping the books, having a cute basket for them, all of that might be nice, but what’s truly at the heart of this task is having enough books ready when you need them.

 

Heidi  8:03

And then our final question is to help you know where to focus your time and resources. What one action would have the greatest benefit? And this is straight from the book Essentialism, by Greg McCune, if you know that book. We love that book. In that book, he explains that if we try to do everything, we’re going to end up with nothing. What truly matters is to pursue the right thing in the right way at the right time.

 

Emily  8:26

The answer to the question about what would give the greatest benefit varies from person to person, and even from year to year. Let’s say you’re hosting the family holiday party this year. Is your one action getting the clutter cleared in the house so you’re free to host without shoving all your stuff into closets? Or maybe your one action is planning some activities that appeal to teenagers, because the kids in your family aren’t so little anymore.

 

Heidi  8:51

Whatever your response is, that is your guide for where to dedicate your resources. That probably means spending more time, energy or money on successfully completing that particular action. But I’m gonna guess that just because you’ve tackled the most important task doesn’t mean that you are ready to go.

 

Emily  9:09

If only we were so lucky. There are probably a dozen or more smaller tasks that need to happen to achieve your main goal, and that is what we’re going to use the rest of the task docket to figure out.

 

Heidi  9:22

So the remaining space in our task docket is filled with a to do list.

 

Emily  9:26

But it’s a to do list with a twist. Yeah, we get wild about to do lists over here. So we have split it into two columns, one for determining what should happen and one for listing tasks to carry out.

 

Heidi  9:40

So basically, it’s divided between thinking tasks and doing tasks. Our thinking tasks include anything that needs to be planned, decided, scheduled, researched or followed up on, and our doing tasks are, that’s just basically everything else.

 

Emily  9:54

And it surprises me how much thinking tasks there really are in everything you have to do, right? Figuring things out is real work. We often underestimate that work because it’s happening in our heads, and when we keep it all in our heads, that makes it overwhelming to manage. That is that crushing mental load we feel sometimes. So getting everything out of your brain and onto a page where you can see it and adjust it is a huge stress relief. Oh, I feel like I need to print this out right now.

 

Heidi  10:23

If you listen to episode six, we made the case for having an action plan for each holiday activity you’re planning. Now, there’s some overlap between an action plan and a task docket, but they are essentially different things.

 

Emily  10:37

Basically, an action plan is where you figure out what you want to have happen. You can write a timeline of events, keep track of tickets, make notes to yourself for how to keep things running smoothly, and list all the supplies you need together.

 

Heidi  10:50

An action plan for an event or a tradition is pretty comprehensive, so you may not need to add a task docket for that activity. If you can use an action plan to break down everything you need to remember for your Polar Express train ride, a task docket may not be necessary. However, if you are planning something big, like a party, you may want a task docket as well as an action plan.

 

Emily  11:15

But you’ll definitely want to make a task docket for all of the rest of your holiday responsibilities that aren’t activities—a docket for Christmas cards, decorating the house, your Christmas Eve plans, gift buying, budgeting, and all the rest can be very helpful.

 

Heidi  11:31

If you are listening to this episode the day it goes live, you know that tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the US, and that means we are in full time holiday prep mode. And it probably means you don’t have time to sit down and figure out every single step you need to take between now and Christmas.

 

Emily  11:46

If you do have the time, definitely take it. Listing out each step needed to meet your goals can reduce stress and increase your efficiency. But I’m going to guess that’s not feasible for most people at this point.

 

Heidi  11:58

And that is why we did the work for you. In the Holiday Headstart Playbook, we included 27 already filled out holiday task dockets.

 

Emily  12:07

That was so nice of us.

 

Heidi  12:08

It really was, and it was hard! You’ll need to identify your purpose and which action would have the greatest benefit, because unfortunately, we could not do that part for you. But we did add the minimum standard of success and as many tasks as we could think of.

 

Emily  12:24

And because the playbook is editable in Google Sheets, you can edit, delete, rearrange those tasks until they fit your needs, but at least you don’t have to start from scratch, which is the hardest part.

 

Heidi  12:35

Since we started this episode by talking about the Christmas tree, let’s take a look at the tree docket. There is a docket for a live tree, because it has so many extra steps, and an artificial tree, and then a task docket for taking down the tree, because, again, so much work.

 

Emily  12:49

Yes, they really are so much work. And not to, like, spoil my own what I’m working on, but the tree is on my list for this week. So this is all very timely. Go ahead, though.

 

Heidi  13:02

Well think about how much work it is to put up an artificial tree, but those crazy folks to get a live one.

 

Emily  13:07

Yeah, you guys are wild. I’ve done it before for a few years and never again.

 

Heidi  13:13

No. So let’s take a look at what tasks go into cutting down your own tree. You decide if this task is worth doing, and then identify your purpose in doing it. For the minimum standard of success, I suggest the tree is up and in the appropriate spot and is cared for. The lights turned on, ornaments are hung.

 

Emily  13:32

And ornaments might even be optional if you’re in a tough spot this year. I have had a year where the tree was up but there were no ornaments on it, because it was just not gonna happen that year. I don’t know if it’s the year I had strep or the year that I had, like a one month old baby, but there was a year that the tree just got up and that was good enough.

 

Heidi  13:51

Yeah, I did that, I think two years ago, because I went—artificial tree woes—I went and put the tree in together, and only half of it lit up. And I just spent so long dithering about, how do I fix this? And it was like, December 15. I was like, okay, the ornaments aren’t going on. And I was sad, but I also recognized that, like, this is the moment that we’re in.

 

Emily  14:08

Yep, it is what it is sometimes.

 

Heidi  14:10

Yeah, you have to make your expectations align with your real life, even if you’ve made the best plans, even if it’s not ideal. Once you have your minimum standard figured out, decide on your most important action, and then it’s time to start listing all of your planning tasks. And again, we did fill out a bunch of these for you. So for example, you need to decide what kind of tree you want, figure out what size of tree to get, decide where to go to cut down the tree, find out the date that tagging opens at the Christmas tree farm, or how to get a permit to cut down the tree in the forest, you need to schedule a day for getting the tree, research how to cut down a tree, decide what you need to care for and decorate the tree, and research how to dispose of it.

 

Emily  14:50

Man, that is why my tree is artificial, because that is a lot.

 

Heidi  14:57

And we haven’t even gotten to the hard work yet. That’s just all the thinking tasks. The doing tasks include getting the right clothing and supplies to go cut down a tree in the winter, traveling to the tree, choosing, measuring and cutting down the tree, getting it home, getting it level in the stand, and keeping it alive.

 

Emily  15:12

Oh, man, no wonder Christmas wears this out. That’s a lot to consider just for your Christmas tree if you’re wild and do a real one.

 

Heidi  15:20

And that’s why it’s so important to have a clear list of steps needed to complete each goal. If you tell yourself, I’ve got to deal with the tree today, your brain is going through that whole list to figure out, like, which one of those tasks are we talking about. But if you have a clear picture of what that next step is, if you can say, I’ve got to buy a tree stand today, that is so much less overwhelming.

 

Emily  15:42

Not to mention it’s a great boost to be able to look back after it’s all done and see how much you accomplished. It’s astounding how much we’re able to do each year for the purpose of making the holiday special.

 

Heidi  15:53

So grab the Holiday Headstart Playbook and get those 27 already done task lists. Your poor brain will thank you.

 

Emily  16:00

Yeah, those alone are worth the price of admission.

 

Emily  16:05

Now it’s time for a Get a Headstart Tip. Each week we leave you with a small actionable tip to help you get a head start on your holiday planning. This week’s get a head start tip is time you’re decorating. Tell us more about this, Heidi.

 

Heidi  16:18

Well if you are like us, and you probably are, because you’re listening to this podcast, you love the feeling that comes with getting ahead of the game. So you are going to love this tip, because it will get you a super head start for next year’s holiday season.

 

Emily  16:33

Okay.

 

Heidi  16:35

As you are decorating this year, try timing yourself to see how long it takes. If you decorate the tree and the house at the same time, you can time them together. If you do them separately, you may want to time them both, or just time how long it takes to decorate the house. Now the reason this is useful is because it will help you schedule your time next season.

 

Heidi  16:55

We sometimes think we have a sense of how long this project is going to take, but this type of thing is really hard to just vibe, so do yourself a favorite and set a timer. If you’ve got a big house, you might find out that it takes you four hours. I only decorate my main living room in my kitchen area, so not including the tree, my decorating only takes about 45 minutes. Now before I timed myself, I felt like I had to block off the whole day to get my decorating done. That meant I was pushing it off because I didn’t have a whole day to spend on it. And then I was stressed because December’s zooming past, and my house doesn’t look festive, and I have all these cute decorations I’m not enjoying, right? But now that I know that it only takes 45 minutes, I don’t even have to block out a whole afternoon.

 

Emily  17:37

Okay, that’s pretty brilliant. And of course, once you know the time, I guess the key is to make sure you can remember it next year. So probably you want to add a note to your calendar or email yourself a reminder. But if you have the Holiday Headstart Playbook, go to the decorating section and open the decor template right at the top. There’s a space for you to record your estimated setup time. Then when you open it up next year, ta da, it’s all ready for you. Easy peasy.

 

Heidi  18:05

Now it’s time for what we’re working on. As a way to keep ourselves accountable and to give you some ideas of what you can do in advance for your own celebrations, we are sharing what we’re working on this week. Emily, what’s on your to do list?

 

Emily  18:16

Well, as I hinted already, mine is to get my tree up this week. So I’m gonna start with just getting it up, like ASAP is the goal, so I can just live with it for a minute and see how I’m feeling about the ornaments and all of that this year. But I want it up. I want it at least up this week so that I can have, I want that Christmas glowy feeling ASAP, so it just needs to get up.

 

Heidi  18:43

Well, we know that Christmas sparkle was one of your values, so that’s important. It’s true. And I think it’s so smart that you’re just taking this step by step—okay, the step one is, well, step one’s probably getting it in the house from the garage.

 

Emily  18:53

Yeah. But it’s not too bad from the garage into my house is not too bad. So, and luckily, my teen gets older and stronger each year. So she is extremely helpful with getting a tree up. These days, she’s much stronger than me.

 

Heidi  19:07

Child labor doesn’t count around the holidays.

 

Emily  19:09

No, she’s happy to do it. She loves to help her mother. What are you working on this week, Heidi?

 

Heidi  19:16

I am finishing up the last of my gift ordering. I fell a little bit into that trap where, because I had made all the decisions of what I was going to get, it’s like, well, it’s done. I forgot the step of actually buying stuff, so gonna get that done.

 

Emily  19:30

Yeah, I’m familiar with that feeling.

 

Heidi  19:34

To wrap up the show, we’re sharing our nice list. Emily, what made it on your nice list this week?

 

Emily  19:38

The Card Game Sleeping Queens, which I’ve heard about for ages, and just never bothered to play. I think my kids had played it at our mom’s house.

 

Heidi  19:47

Yeah, I think our parents had it.

 

Emily  19:48

But I had never played it, and one of them got it for a birthday or something this year. I don’t know. We finally got it out, and it’s really fun. It’s such a cute game, and it’s really easy to play. Like the directions made sense really quickly, so it was easy to get everybody up and running on it, and I enjoyed it too. The rounds are pretty fast. I ended up taking it with me to school to celebrate my daughter’s birthday. They do a parents can come to lunch day and but they can’t bring any friends with them to sit at the table. So sometimes it’s a little dull. So I bring a game for us to play while we eat our lunch, and I brought Sleeping Queens. And she actually did have a friend who was also at the birthday table who came and played with us, and it was actually really fun. So Sleeping Queens, if you need a game for Christmas, would make a great gift or even a stocking stuffer.

 

Heidi  20:36

Oh, that’s fun. Those cards are so cute.

 

Emily  20:39

They’re so cute. It’s the cutest little sets of kings and queens and adorable. What’s on your nice list this week, Heidi?

 

Heidi  20:45

Okay well, this is less cute, but it’s called Clean Cubes. Think maybe they were on Shark Tank. They’re just, they’re like disposable garbage cans. How they describe it is, you unfold it and it’s kind of like a heavy duty paper box.

 

Emily  21:01

Oh, yes, I didn’t know that’s what these were called.

 

Heidi  21:03

Yes, with a garbage liner in it. So the idea is, if you’re hosting a barbecue in the backyard, you can set these around, and people can use them as garbage cans, and then they’re just easy to clean up. But I saw the idea to get these for Christmas morning, because you can get some, they have a pattern that’s red with white snowflakes, so it looks very Christmassy, and then you set it out with the gifts. So you don’t have garbage bags in all of your photos, but you can still make it easy to clean up all of the wrapping paper.

 

Emily  21:32

Yeah. I think some people are probably like, oh, we just make a huge mess, and then we clean it all up after. We are not those people. We are clean as we go people. So we did always have garbage bags in the pictures, and I hated it. But I did, it never even occurred to me that there was, like another option. So when you brought these last year, I loved them, and it was so nice. They stand up well too, like they work well, you can have one next to each kid, and it’s just excellent.

 

Heidi  21:58

They are kind of pricey. It’s like $17 for three and the price, of course, has gone up this year. But the thing is, because you’re just putting wrapping paper in, it’s not like people are throwing their half full coke cans and like at a barbecue or plates of potato salad. It’s just wrapping paper. So you could take out the plastic liner and either, you know, put it into a different bag, or just dispose of that and then put a new liner in each year.

 

Emily  22:23

Yeah, I think we kind of just dumped them out into a bigger bag at the end of unwrapping or something like that. Like, it would be easy peasy to do.

 

Heidi  22:32

Yeah, they also have different designs. Like, I know we have some birthday ones, and so definitely look at that if you also are tired of garbage sacks in your Christmas photos.

 

Emily  22:40

Apparently, I need to get a birthday one to add to the birthday bin. Because, yeah, there’s usually a garbage bag in the pictures.

 

Heidi  22:46

Oh, don’t worry, I got one.

 

Emily  22:48

Phew!

 

Heidi  22:48

So we’re set for Eloise’s birthday.

 

Heidi  22:52

That is it for today’s episode. Get started on your task docket so you know all of the little steps you need to complete, and remember this week’s get a head start tip to time your decorating.

 

Emily  23:02

Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope to see you here again next week. If you enjoyed this episode, would you please leave us a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts so that you can help us reach new listeners.