Making It From Black Friday to NYE Successfully & Happily

Thanksgiving is over and Black Friday arrives. I always get the feeling I should be amongst those shoppers on that dreadful day, fighting my way through the crowds in order to get the best price on the latest iPod. Except the thought of being the mix of a frenzied crowd brings terrifies me…and irritates me. I know my limits and avoiding Black Friday like the plague is amongst them.

That being said, I always get stressed about the holidays. Am I buying gifts that people will like? Am I keeping to my budget (rarely)? Should this person get a holiday card even though I never hear from them? Will I get everything done on time and how can I avoid turning what should be a warm, fun holiday spent gathered with people I love into one of dread and stress?

Well, first off, I try to remember that I should be enjoying this time and then I make a plan. Knowing in advance what I will need helps me to plan out when I need to purchase the items, bake the cookies, send out the cards and it keeps me in line with my budget. It also helps me to avoid the stress of poor planning so now I rarely forget people and I find my stress levels are lower. The plan doesn’t have to be over-the-top, just a simple list of what I need for who and when is helpful to keep myself organized.

Holiday cards; most men don’t have to deal with this. I’m not sure why, but men are forgiven and rarely expected to send out cards. They are lucky. Then again, they probably don’t receive many cards themselves and I really like getting cards in the mail and hearing what others are up to or just reading the simple note. Which brings me to my next point: if you send out cards – keep the list shorter than the dictionary. Send out e-cards if you are so popular you have that many friends. If not, weed those people off the list you never speak to, don’t particularly care for, or who are too lazy to send you a card with anything other than their name on it. They’re not making an effort, why should you?

The art of gift giving. Some people are lucky, they have everything they possibly could want or need. Those who must buy those people gifts are not as lucky. So this year, I realized that after surviving through part of this recession that I am really lucky. I have everything I need and so do those people I intend to buy gifts for. So instead of racking my brain for a gift they’ll like and instead of going with the token bottle of wine or scented candle, I turned to Heifer International , Ocean.org, the Cancer Society, and the local animal shelter where my dad adopted his cat as a way to give gifts that can’t end up dusty in the back of a closet. I purchased honey bees, chicks, a hammerhead shark, and a baby seal on behalf of the people I love so we could give back to the planet in some small way. I have to say, I feel fabulous about these gifts which is a nice change from carting around heavy items and wondering if I picked out the right item. I couldn’t go wrong this year and I waited in no lines. Just pick a charity you think that person would also support. My aunt had cancer and is now healthy so I’m contributing to the American Cancer Society.

I’ve also been pacing myself. I do a little bit at a time instead of waiting for a Saturday in which to kill myself in a race to get everything done. It is satisfying and I feel a lot less stressed. I practice doing a little at a time for most things and I find I always get everything done on time. Not forcing myself to do it all at once helps me do better work, stay interested, stay on task and not feel like I need to tear my hair out. Whether it’s housecleaning, purging old files or clothing, or even shopping for gifts or groceries, it doesn’t need to be done all at once at the same time. Remembering I can do it all, but not all at the same time helps me keep what’s important in perspective.

My mother actually used to do a little at once over the holidays and managed to make a game out of it for us kids. Every day we’d come home from school to find she’d put up a few new decorations. This way she wasn’t doing it all at once and we got to figure out what was new and where she had placed it. It was very fun. Again, doing a little at a time makes the process easier, more enjoyable and it still gets done on time.

Speaking of mom’s they seem to be the one’s who do nearly everything in preparing for the holidays. Just remember that they need and deserve to be helped. Husbands can do their part and even small children can learn how to help as well. Offering to help someone during the holidays may be the greatest gift you can ever give them.

May you all have a happy and healthy holiday season.

5 Ways to Survive Thanksgiving

Holidays are stressful. Mostly because we make them out to be stressful, so here are 5 ways you can survive Thanksgiving this year.

Be Thankful. It IS Thanksgiving after all. Sure, the holiday started out with the Native Americans kindly sharing their bounty with us and then we killed most of them and took their land but we can still be thankful that we’re with our families, we have our health, we have a day off from work or something. Just find something you’re grateful for and enjoy the day.

Plan ahead. Sure, some of you may get a rush by waiting until the last minute, but then you risk the good stuff being gone from the stores, or worse- the wrong sized turkey, the stress of not having anything done and the panic that comes when you can’t find one small, but key ingredient and have to travel to 6 busy grocery stores fighting with everyone else who waited until the last minute. At least plan out your list ahead of time, know what you need and how long everything will take. Add in an hour or two for those unexpected, “oh no!” moments and if you don’t need them, then sit back and relax. If you can pre-order your groceries or get them delivered, do so.

Ask for help! I’ve spent too many Thanksgivings doing all the shopping, the cooking and the cleaning. I then spent every Friday in an exhausted turkey induced stupor. Why? I have no idea. I could have asked everyone to help, but I didn’t. Do not make my mistake. If you have people over the age of 5 who are able bodied, give them a job to do and let them help out. Even if it’s taking out the trash with the turkey carcass in it, who cares, just know it’s not your sole responsibility to do absolutely everything. Unless you’re the maid and you’re being paid for it, then it is your responsibility.

Don’t overdo it. There’s no such thing as perfection and if you’re anything like me, the more you try to be perfect, the worse the situation becomes. The mistakes are kind of comical after the fact, but during that time you’re just needlessly stressing yourself out. Good enough is good enough. I once mistakenly spilled too much rosemary into my stuffing and couldn’t pick it out. The stuffing was painful to eat because the rosemary was poking our gums. It was a bit embarrassing, but I dealt with it, no one died and from then on I remembered that the cap to the rosemary should be opened carefully. See, good lessons can come from not-so-great events. You can probably do anything, but you certainly can’t do it all at once. Let little things go.


You can’t change anyone else but yourself. If you’re spending the holiday with your not-so-favorite relatives or friends, choose how you’re going to react to the day. Sure, Aunt Erma will probably drink too much…again, but that’s her issue, not yours. Choose to make sure that you have fun, you are relaxed and those little bumps that come with holidays are just little bumps instead of major tragedies. A major tragedy is when you put the deep fryer too close to the house and it burns down. Try making wine spritzers and hopefully that will help keep Aunt Erma slightly more sober, but if you walk into the holiday acting like you’re walking on to a battlefield, you probably won’t have much fun. Again, choose to let the little things go, if even for one day and be grateful everyone at the table is there again, at least for this year.

To learn more about Alison Kero and her company, Gotham Concierge or to schedule a time management seminar, webinar or one-on-one session with her, contact Alison at: info@gothamconcierge.com or 646-831-9625.

Save Time & Lower Stress by Walking Away from a Frustrating Situation

Here’s yet another time saving tip I’ve learned through experience: if you’re trying to accomplish something and it’s not working, WALK AWAY FROM IT for the time being.

I spent the better part of the day with a client last week trying to simply copy a file from NeatWorks and transfer it to another computer so I could share those files with Quickbooks. It should have been easy. “Should” being the operative word. It wasn’t.

The file was too large and would have taken 9 hours to copy and e-mail through yousenditnow.com so we decided to burn a copy to a disk and transfer it that way. This should have been even easier, but for whatever reason, after spending 20 minutes watching the disk slowly burn the information, it did not have the latest updates. Since I am trying to share the receipts I have spent hours scanning so that my client can track her expenses through Quickbooks, I was looking forward to the end result and seeing how well those two products worked together.

It didn’t work. We could not transfer that file without a tremendous amount of time being taken up. Our decision in the end was to walk away from it and try another time. In this case we were lucky since there isn’t a deadline until April 15, 2010 but even if you are on a deadline, sometimes the best thing for you to do is to walk away, even for a brief time.

Continuing to try to solve a problem may not always be the best solution. You get tired, frustrated, cranky and sometimes fidgety. Sometimes you unconsciously keep trying the same process despite the fact that it hasn’t worked. Walking away lowers your stress levels and allows you some time to process what you have done, think about why it isn’t working correctly and to maybe figure out a way to solve the issue. Either way, coming back after even a 5 minute break can be tremendously helpful. You’re eliminating the old adage of, “beating the dead horse”. I hate to think how that saying came about.

Case-in-point: yesterday I was going through a huge file folder crammed with 6 months worth of receipts for a client. I spent 1 hour going through this and organizing them into 6 different categories. After an hour I thought I was going to go nuts. First, off, it’s not like you’re busting your brain, but it is mind numbing and tedious work. Secondly, sitting and organizing receipts for an hour gets uncomfortable. You need to take small breaks in order to continue the job. I decided to simply come back next week when my mind was fresh and finish the job. However, had I needed to finish then, I would have simply taken a 5 minute break, walked around the block and then would have been able to return feeling at least slightly more refreshed.

The moral is that walking away can lower your stress levels and help you think more clearly. In the end, I find that not concentrating so hard on solving something allows your brain time to process it and in the end, can actually save you time. And it’s always all about saving time and making your life easier.

If you have a tedious project you never quite get to, try doing them in smaller increments. Set aside 10 minutes and then walk away for awhile. You do not have to get any project done in one sitting, and frankly, I find doing jobs in smaller increments much easier and less stressful. If you can’t seem to get past the mental block of the project you need to accomplish or need help getting motivated, contact me at: info@gothamconcierge.com or call on my cell at: 646-831-9625. I provide phone consultations and at-home or in-office consultations as well. Good luck with your task!