According to the article “Enjoy Your Holidays: 5 Ways to Manage Your Time This Season” by contributor Julie Chomiak on business2community.com, business owners juggle multiple duties every day, and when the holiday season arrives, it demands even more of their time. However, Chomiak offers five holiday time management tips to see your sanity through this busy season:

• Set goals for the season. Understand when your busiest time of the season is, whether it’s from November to January or just December, and set priorities for the holidays. Creating these goals will help you focus, and as you check them off the list, you will get an added sense of accomplishment.
• Maintain your normal routine. While this advice may sound improbable, it will actually help your productivity and holiday time management. Varying your routine can make you feel unsettled and unfocused. Certainly, you will have to anticipate and account for some time to see to your seasonal priorities, but stick to your normal personal and work routines and much as possible.
• Schedule your marketing in advance. Social media is an essential marketing tool, but it can take time to manage. Use an automation platform, such as Hootsuite, to schedule all your posts in advance so that the time you would have normally spent on it will be open during those weeks when you are busiest. In addition, if you are planning any email marketing campaigns, write all your messages at once and schedule them too in advance. This way, you will have all your holiday marketing done before the season hits its peak.

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• Communicate changes with customers. Holiday hours, closings and guaranteed delivery dates are all expected changes this time of year. However, customers are so inundated with these messages everywhere that if you are not proactive and putting the information in front of them, it could get lost in the stream. Post your changes on social media, put up posters, send out emails and make a banner for your website. Letting customers know about holiday changes to your business operations will not only help them prepare, but it will also set expectations that can help prevent upsetting them.
• Take time to enjoy the holidays. The holidays are a time for everyone to enjoy. But if you don’t plan ahead and schedule time to take off, the season can blow right past you. Mark down the times you plan to be out of the office and make sure your employees know about them. In addition, consider allowing employees to have flexible hours over the holiday season, so that they can manage their personal duties and not be distracted by the thought of them while at work. And, since they won’t be as distracted at work, it will increase their productivity and benefit your business as well.

You can read the original article about holiday time management here.