Bullish: Use The Holidays To Get Ahead (While Sitting On Your Mom’s Couch)

Jennifer Dziura writes Bullish, a career column, for The Grindstone on Fridays and Bullish Life, a life coaching column, for our sister site TheGloss on Tuesdays.

‘Tis the season, and I am headed to the familial homestead in Virginia to engage in a small, somewhat sarcastic Christmas gift-exchange and going-out-to-dinner in which the youngest participant is my twenty-nine-year-old brother — hence, little magic-making is needed or expected. No one will be dressing up as Santa and making out with Mom (unless there’s something I don’t know about).

Business has slowed down for me this month, as it always does, which has given me some time to clear out my inbox, pitch things, and schedule my 2012 to my satisfaction — I am starting multiple companies in 2012 that all work together in clever ways, and I’m possibly hiring, and I’m going to tell you all about the whole thing, including dollar amounts!

So, today, in the spirit of Bullish Life: 5 Ways to Improve Your Life in 5 Minutes, here are a few ways to use the holidays to get ahead.

I tried to suggest things you can do while sitting on Mom’s couch, half-paying-attention to a laptop, or in little snippets in between chopping onions and adding more booze to the eggnog.

Oh, and if you’re not celebrating Christmas, you have a productivity bonus already! Get some Chinese food and take over the world.

Use the season as an excuse for thank-yous and compliments

You know what I don’t believe in? Emailed holiday cards. The whole point of paper holiday cards (which I personally don’t bother to send, as I think that a lot of scrapbooking and holiday-newsletter-making and making things by gluing shit to other shit are just ways to keep women occupied and not accruing actual power) is that someone thought of you in advance, and knows where you live, and also it’s nice to see people’s handwriting from time to time. It’s sort of intimate.

But email holiday cards take little effort or forethought, and can be sent to entire mailing lists without even a thoughtfully-chosen Love stamp. Furthermore, say those who work in IT, they clog mail servers with their HTML-heavy bells and whistles and activate everybody’s spam filters. Total crap.

However, the holiday season is a lovely opportunity to email anyone you want to pitch something to, or to just make nice and build up goodwill. Try, “I was just cleaning out my inbox for the end of the year and noticed that I never followed up about your amazing idea!” or “I was just making plans for the new year and wanted to thank you for helping my out with my files all throughout 2011!” or “Happy New Year! Did you know that you’re my favorite web designer ever? Thanks for the amazing work.”

Holiday greetings mean more when they’re jammed full of professional respect. Also, you can easily send two dozen of these while half-listening to tales about your relatives’ children and arthritis.

Ask, “How do you think I’m doing?”

Harvard Business Review’s You Are Not the Best Judge of You makes the point that you need outside feedback; our own self-perceptions are often quite off. (For instance, I was once told that I was terrifying.)

Just as the new year is a fine excuse to get back in touch with people whose email threads you’ve dropped, or to offer thanks or compliments or pitch crazy ideas, the new year is also a fine excuse to ask a boss or client, “I’m just closing up some business for the end of 2011 and wanted to ask if there’s anything you’d like me to do differently in 2012.” Doesn’t that seem reasonable and not-too-abrupt?

Also, if you’re the sort of person who avoids asking for feedback because you can’t take criticism (hey, you’re a real human who bleeds real blood!), the holiday season will probably result in much softer replies to this question. Everyone’s nice (er, nicer) this time of year! It’s the perfect time to ask for feedback and change course if needed.