Sixteen Weekends Out From Christmas
There are sixteen trading weekends between now and Christmas. Once you count them out like that, the busy season stops feeling like something off in the distance and starts feeling like something that is basically already here.
Spring usually gets talked about as a time to tidy up the business side of things, subscriptions, paperwork, that sort of admin. That is worth doing, but it is not what actually needs sorting before the rush hits.
What actually needs sorting is the pile of half finished things sitting in the too hard basket. Every business has a few. The project you started in July and put down when something more urgent came up. The staff conversation you have been meaning to have. The decision about whether to bring on extra help for December that you keep pushing to next week. None of these are urgent today. All of them will be urgent in November, at the exact moment you have the least time to deal with them properly.
The businesses that come out of the Christmas period in one piece are usually not the ones who worked the hardest through it. They are the ones who went into it with a clear plate. That means making the decisions now that you would otherwise be forced to make in a hurry later.
A few worth getting ahead of:
Staffing. If you are going to need extra hands over the busy period, now is when you find out whether your usual casuals are actually available, not the first week of December when everyone else is asking the same question.
Stock or materials. Suppliers get slower and less flexible the closer you get to the silly season. Whatever lead time you think you need, plan for longer.
The stuff you have been putting off. Pick two or three of those half finished things sitting in the background and either finish them or actively decide to park them until the new year. A decision either way is better than letting them drift.
What you are saying yes to. Between now and Christmas, your time only gets scarcer. Be a bit more deliberate about what new commitments you take on in the next few weeks, because whatever you agree to now still has to be delivered in your busiest month.
None of this is about doing more. It is about making sure the busy season is the only thing filling your plate when it arrives, instead of sharing space with everything you never quite got around to.
If you want a hand working out what to finish, park, or say no to before the rush hits, that is exactly the kind of thing we do at EDL Consulting. Get in touch and we will sort it out together.
