hi everyone here is hiato vas and this is the five minutes podcast the last podcast of the year and I want to touch in a topic that is always fun sad and crazy at the same time it's how people complain that their projects are becoming late because of the holidays or because of vacation or because of the end of the Year celebrations you know it's just crazy and why it's crazy because uh for about 2,000 years this happens and we are many times unable to prepare ourselves and prepare our projects to this type of event
so many times people get so anxious during this time because you know my project is late I'm not able to deliver my project I'm having trouble with my project because everybody is on holidays everybody is on vacation and the problems are popping up you know this is not you this happens pretty much every year so I want to share with you three tips that I use in my projects to help me to overcome this the first one is having a calendar and I subscribe to calendars with holidays and celebrations in all countries I operate so
if I'm doing a project in a specific country I always download the calendar of holidays of this country and you can do that Google Google Calendars has this Apple has this Outlook has this so you can subscribe to holiday calendars for Brazil for the US for Saudi Arabia for Thailand for China for the country you want and this will highlight the holidays and the relevant dates on each of these countries and why these matters because this drives me to the second point you can plan the tasks based on this for example if it's Thanksgiving in
the US this is a super relevant date for the US so it does not make sense for you to put a lot of work for your team in the US so it does not make sense because people will be focused on celebrating so if you can I'm not saying all projects will be possible to do that you can shift some of these work for example on that Sprint or on that phase of your project to different groups in different parts of the world I'm talking if you are doing an Enterprise project if you are not
doing many times you need to understand who is celebrating who is not celebrating which kind of resource can you use on that time because you will see that pretty much every single day there is a holiday in a different place every single day so if you are operating globally these will happen because sometimes it's Chinese New Year sometimes it's Brazilian Carnival sometimes it's us Thanksgiving Canadian Thanksgiving these will change depending on where you are and where you are operating and I know many of you will say to me Ricardo but you know I do not
operate globally I operate locally so if you operate locally it comes to my third task it's you need to anticipate critical deliverables critical tasks and why you should do that you should speed up and reduce the pressure imagine like a pressure cook okay the heat is increasing what you need to do you need to release that pressure and how do you release that pressure by anticipating critical tasks of course maybe this year you will not be able to do that but do not repeat that problem next year because it does not make sense at all
so what is important for you you need to anticipate these critical deliverables because by anticipating these critical deliverables you reduce the pressure for example this year I did a massive amount of work I worked around 16 hours to 17 hours a day in December up to the 17th of December and that day was my last client facing day of the year so from 17th up to 31st in December I am working of course I'm recording podcast and this but I'm doing internal things why because the pleas reduce the pressure and allows me to enjoy my
time because for example I don't have a holiday because I'm you know I work for myself so I don't have vacation and this so it's up to me to decide on that so what I do I just reduce the amount of workload but to reduce the pressure and to reduce the anxiety what I do I anticipate the work and you can do that you can plan your work to make sure that you will be be able to enjoy your holidays or to enjoy your vacation with quality and without compromise your project and why this is
so crazy and I said it because you know this happens every year every year I receive emails from people saying oh I'm late what do I do I have to work and this and I say look Christmas New Year is there every single year and every single year you were repeating the same mistake so always always think about that having a good calendar so you can anticipate when it's a holiday or when it's a a vacation time for example in a country second do shifts plan tasks for example if you want to plan tasks for
example if you have a global team you can plan tasks during Christmas time in Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia does not celebrate Christmas you can plan work on Thanksgiving us Thanksgiving with your team in China so you need to do that and you plan and you need to anticipate these critical tasks as much as you can because then it will reduce the pressure on this pressure cook that is your project for this time so at least you can have a quality time without compromising your project think about that I wish you all a fantastic New
Year and a brilliant year that is coming with happiness joy and a lot of successful projects see you next week with another 5 minutes podcast
