Holiday Debriefing

Christmas package, letter and foliage

When big events happen in major corporations, there is almost always a debriefing process that happens. What went well? What didn't? What can we learn for next time? And so on...

In our personal lives though, we often survive one season, only to move on to the next. Whether because of busy-ness, exhaustion, or a billion other reasons, we are missing out on a key step that could help us to build on our own life expertise. After surviving the holiday season, and often in the midst of the chaos, I often find myself saying, "I am so not doing that next year," or "we should make this a tradition." The problem is that life is busy and chances are good that I won't actually remember what I just said when December rolls around next year. Going through a holiday debriefing process can help us all remember those things better, build on them for next year and continue to improve the Holiday season, moving it from stressful to wonderful.

How to Do a Holiday Debriefing:

  1. You can either do these on your own, or even better with your family. You might gain some additional insight into what works or didn't. If you absolutely hated driving around to look at lights but it was little Johnny's favorite activity, you might want to pause before deleting it next year (or at least find a better way to do it.)
  2. Be 100% Honest, but also kind and considerate of what others in your family might want or not want.
  3. Write down your answers and put them somewhere you can actually find it. You have a couple of options here. Old school pen and paper can be stored in your Holiday decorations box. If you are tech-savvy, you can create your document in Google Drive and link it to a calendar event you schedule for around Thanksgiving next year. I am sure there are ways for the Mac users and non-Google people, but you might have to Google that... 🙂
  4. Next year actually read your debrief from this year and make adjustments to learn from your wisdom. If you do this each year, in theory your Holiday seasons will continue to improve.

So what do you talk about during this debriefing? I am so glad you asked! Below find all the questions that should help guide the conversation, or click Holiday Debriefing 2017 to download it as a PDF.

Holiday Debriefing 2017

I would love feedback about how this went for you and yours! Please share below, what worked, what didn't or any aha moments you may have had. Is there anything you are going to quit doing next year or make a tradition?

1 thought on “Holiday Debriefing”

Comments are closed.