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Hi everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast, the last podcast of the year. And I want to touch on a topic that is always fun, sad, and crazy at the same time. It's how people complain that their projects are becoming late because of the holidays, or because of vacation, or because of the end of the year celebrations. You know, it's just crazy. And why? It's crazy because for about 2000 years, this has happened, and we have been unable to prepare ourselves and prepare our projects for this type of event. So many times people get so anxious during this time because, you know, my project is late. I'm not able to deliver my project. I'm having trouble with my project because everybody is on holiday, everybody is on vacation, and the problems are popping up. You know, this is not new. This happens pretty much every year. So, I want to share with you three tips that I use in my projects to help me overcome this. The first one is having a calendar and I subscribe to calendars with holidays and and celebrations in all countries I operate. So, if I'm doing a project in a specific country, I always download the calendar of holidays for this country, and you can do that. Google Calendars has this, Apple has this, and Outlook has this.
So you can subscribe to the holiday calendars for Brazil, for the US, for Saudi Arabia, for Thailand, for China, for the country you want. And this will highlight the holidays and the relevant dates in each of these countries. And why this matters. Because this drives me to the second point, you can plan the tasks based on this. For example, if it's Thanksgiving in the US, this is a super relevant date for the US, so it does not make sense for you to put a lot of work for your team in the US. So it does make does not make sense because people will be focused on celebrating. So if you can, I'm not saying all projects will be possible to do that. You can shift some of this work, for example, on that sprint or on that phase of your project, to different groups in different parts of the world. I'm talking about if you were doing an enterprise project, if you are not doing it many times, you need to understand who is celebrating, who is not celebrating, and which kind of resource you can use at that time. Because you will see that pretty much every single day there is a holiday in a different place every single day.
So if you are operating globally, This will happen because sometimes it's Chinese New Year, sometimes it's Brazilian Carnival, sometimes it's us Thanksgiving, you know. And this will be Canadian Thanksgiving. These will change depending on where you are and where you are operating. And I know many of you will say to me, Ricardo, but you know, I do not operate globally. I operate locally. So if you operate locally, it comes to my third task. It's you need to anticipate critical deliverables, critical tasks and why you should do that. You should speed up and reduce the pressure. Imagine a pressure cooker, okay? The heat is increasing what you need to do. You need to release that pressure. And how do you release that pressure? By anticipating critical tasks. Of course, maybe this year you will not be able to do that but do not repeat that problem next year because it does not make sense at all. So what is important for you? You need to anticipate these critical deliverables because by anticipating these critical deliverables, you reduce the pressure. For example, this year I did a massive amount of work. I worked around 16 hours to 17 hours a day in December up to the 17th of December. And that day was my last client-facing day of the year.
So from the 17th up to the 31st of December, I am working. Of course, I'm recording podcasts and this. But I'm doing internal things. Why? Because these reduce the pressure and allow me to enjoy my time. Because, for example, I don't have a holiday because I'm, you know, I work for myself, so I don't have a vacation in this. So it's it's up to me to decide on that. So what I do is I just reduce the workload. But to reduce the pressure and to reduce the anxiety, what I do, I anticipate the work. And you can do that. You can plan your work to make sure that you will be able to enjoy your holidays, or to enjoy your vacation with quality and without compromise. Your project. And why is this so crazy? And I said it because, you know, this happens every year. Every year I receive emails from people saying, oh, I'm late, what do I do? I have to work. And this. And I say, look, Christmas New Year is there every single year, and every single year, you are repeating the same mistake. So always think about having a good calendar so you can anticipate when it's a holiday or when it's vacation time in, for example, a country.
A second dose shifts planned tasks, for example, if you want to plan tasks. For example, if you have a global team, you can plan tasks during Christmas time, for example, in Saudi Arabia, because Saudi Arabia does not celebrate Christmas, you can plan work on Thanksgiving, US Thanksgiving with your team. Sorry about your team in China. So you need to do that. And you plan, and you need to anticipate these critical tasks as much as you can because then it will reduce the pressure on this pressure cooker that is your project for this time. So, at least you can have quality time without compromising your project. Think about that. I wish you all a fantastic new year and a brilliant year that is coming with happiness, joy, and a lot of successful projects. See you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
