Christmas Cancelled
Perhaps the best thing about the Christmas holidays is that pretty much everything stops. The email is silent. The phone is silent. It even got more silent than what we had planned. Our respective families are split between two cities separated by a 4-hour drive, and we take turns every other year on the 24th of December. This year it was Umeå’s turn. We were planning to head North a day or two later to celebrate “small” Christmas/New year instead with the other half of the family. Unfortunately, that didn’t come about due to illness and on duty work. That’s rather sad, but there’s usually a positive flip side to the coin.
Hopefully, we can give it another shot this coming weekend to catch up with the family. Such things are very important. Anyways, the holidays of 2022 turned out to be a new personal record in low energy. The whole week was spent pretty much with our little family, together with the boys and the dogs. We built Lego’s like never before, slept in until 09:30 (previously unheard of) and played music together in the rehearsal studio in the garage. Combined with some chocolate and other treats. We didn’t go anywhere for a whole week, we just spent time together doing “nothing”. And oh boy was it wonderful. I think the crucial issue here is that we knew all the time, that we aren’t going anywhere. We are staying put. That will make you enter a different mindset.
A similar experience can occur when companies want to do some planning/strategy and teambuilding and leave for another location. When the whole group has travelled to another place, preferably far enough from home to eliminate any thoughts of leaving and in stead spending the night together, something happens with the productivity and focus. That’s my personal experience at least. You get a “locked” slot in the calendar for a whole day or two, and that can produce magic. My experience with the family this holiday was completely analogous to that. Except we didn’t go anywhere, we made a conscious decision to stay in one place – home – instead. And for several days too.
I will never forget the state of flow my 3-year-old entered when we were constructing the 1000-piece Lego fire truck together. He was literally on fire. That was proper team building. And I’ll never forget the rehearsal sessions with the little one-year old musician either. He just wants to go to my studio and play around with my instruments all. the. time. Five-six times a day is common practice. And usually, I’m not even able to close the door in the house before he tells me he wants to go and “play the drums” as he calls it.
Parental leave this summer also had many similarities, but it made a huge difference that we were united the whole family this time. All of us together and work stress all but eliminated. So, from that perspective, it was a good thing that fate cancelled our Christmas plans. However, now it is very important to give it a 2nd chance as soon as possible. Habits are very easy to break, because the moment you stop doing anything, it is not a habit anymore. Christmas celebrations is a good habit and must not be broken. I miss my family in the north, hope to see them soon in a couple of days.