Are you ready for Christmas?

I don’t mean your business - if you sell products, you’d better be ready by now and enjoying the rush. But what about personally?

One thing a lot of people do this time of year, whether the work at home or outside the home, is procrastinate and get stressed about getting their shopping done. In my family we’ve managed to do a lot to avoid that.

The number one thing we do is draw names. This cuts down on the number of people you need to shop for, which is always a help. We also agreed on price ranges so no one feels like they overspent or underspent.

Now, this won’t work for all families. Obviously small children can’t do name drawings, and others prefer to get a pile of gifts, even if the individual gifts are smaller that way. But for us it is wonderful.

Another thing we do is not worry about when exactly we celebrate. With marriages and inlaws to deal with, it’s nice to have people you can exchange gifts with any day, even after New Year’s if it comes down to that. Besides, then you can get those great after-Christmas deals so many stores have.

The other problem many home businesspeople have is knowing when to slow down at this time of year. Your ability to do this will depend on your business, of course; if you’re shipping gifts to your customers there is no way to slow down until the job is done. But when the time comes that you can slow down and enjoy the season with your family, do so!

Now, we’ll see how well I can take my own advice. It’s so hard to not check my email many, many times a day, look for fresh advice on the discussion boards or get to work on some project. This stuff can be addicting, after all. But I just have to look at my daughter asking me to play to remember that there are more important things out there.