The Best Gift You Can Give Your Career This Christmas

Tis the season of giving, so why not take the opportunity to give something back to your career this Christmas?

Ensuring your career is healthy and successful takes more than just skill building, experience, and hard work. It also means looking after your mental health, being self-reflective, and recognising when it’s time to take a break. And guess what guys – the holiday season is kind of the best time to take a break.

So this Christmas, give a little gift of time to your career so you can take on 2019 with a flourish. Here’s how you can do it:

Take a break

Seriously, the holiday season is the best time to take a step back – everyone is expecting you to, and it’s pretty socially acceptable to take it easy at the end of the year. That’s not to say it’s acceptable to skive off work or ignore any looming assignment deadlines, but it’s easy to let stress build up throughout the year, and heading into the New Year without taking a break isn’t the best idea.

Taking some time for yourself is pretty essential in avoiding burnout and ensuring you can get stuck in to 2019 fresh and ready to take on new challenges.

Reflect

While you’ve got some downtime, it’s a good idea to look back over the year and think about what you would like to change. What would you do differently? What aspects of your life – work or otherwise – were the most difficult that you’d like to tackle in a new way next year?

The New Year offers a great opportunity for change, and to refocus on your own career fulfilment and happiness. So take some time to look back before your look forward!

Get personal

It’s easy to let personal projects or passions fall by the wayside when life gets busy. Christmas and the end of the year is a great time to get back on that productivity train.

Personal projects are a great way to build your skills and your portfolio, while doing something that you care about. Putting time aside to get stuck back in to any projects or hobbies you’ve neglected is a great use of time – both for your mental health, and your career.

Reconnect

Finally, taking some time to reconnect with people you’ve fallen out of contact with throughout the year is another wonderful way to restart your social life and do a sneaky bit of networking at the same time. Building connections – both in and outside of your industry – is a great way to stay abreast of any new opportunities that arise, and lets you keep building those relationships that make life worth living.

Featured image courtesy of Unsplash