Dog Blog 28.0 – A Brain Holiday

Right now (mid- to late December) is a tricky time of year. On one hand, you have clients emailing and calling like crazy, looking for help with last minute projects and deadlines. On the other hand, you have clients who have completely disappeared from existence and won’t return until January. This is the strange time of year when some of your clients are working around the clock, while others take a solid 2 weeks of vacation. Although the employees of YellowDog will just be taking off for Christmas and New Year’s, we’ll admit that it’s not a normal schedule around here at all. We might still physically be in the office…but it’s almost as if we’re on a little “brain vacation!”

All of the upcoming holidays have got me wondering – how many of our clients are ACTUALLY working during the holiday season? It seems like most people are in the office, but they’re just popping in here and there throughout the next few weeks. Does anyone have a solid schedule (that is, in the office every day from now until New Year’s Day, excluding Christmas)? What do other agencies do? Is it even possible to concentrate when it feels like 95% of your friends/coworkers are taking vacation? There’s so many questions to be answered!

I decided to do a little research to see what I could find out:

• According to this article, 57% of people will still be working during the holidays
• This article discusses how Americans love the holidays, but spend them doing things they hate!
• Even if their company does offer holiday vacation, 4 in 10 Americans don’t use up all of their vacation time, as discussed here
• This article accurately describes this time of year as the “office dead zone” – when you half-heartedly work a strange number of days between Christmas and New Year’s

It looks like there is no true answer to my questions, but I do know a few things – motivation is currently low, expectations for the holidays are high, and the amount of work that will actually get done is questionable!

Let’s just hit the magic “Santa button” and disappear until January 3!