Surviving your holiday deadlines
Happy Hump Day {{first_name | Toaster}} 🐪 ,
The holidays call us to back to hygge-core coziness, peppermint hot chocolate, and soft girl hibernation. Meanwhile, corporate culture treats December like an Olympic sprint. Suddenly everything is “mission-critical,” “high priority,” “a final push,” and “before we wrap.” It’s like the office collectively forgot that December arrives every single year.
Holiday deadlines aren’t just about business urgency, they’re sometimes about optics, desperation, and our egos wanting to feel like their year ended with momentum.
And yet, women absorb the impact of the emotional labour, invisible labour, and sometimes actual domestic labour. Holiday logistics, family dynamics, travel plans, gift buying, hosting, parenting, caregiving, all while someone slacks you “Quick favour???”
Let’s be honest, your workplace will not fall apart if something happens January 4 instead of December 21. Very few people are actually around to push things through anyway. Half your stakeholders are already mentally OOO, the other half are physically OOO, and the last quarter ghosts you until January then acts shocked when nothing shipped.
Here’s your permission slip to prioritize realistically, communicate clearly, and refuse to martyr yourself on the altar of “year-end.”
A few gentle survival tips:
Don’t sprint into your vacation: If you roll into PTO already stressed, you’re not going on holiday - you’re entering a recovery ward. Work at a humane pace.
Push back on panic disguised as productivity: You’re allowed to say, “January is better timing.” You’re allowed to ask, “What’s the actual consequence if this lands in early January?” You’d be amazed how many “urgent” things magically evaporate.
Protect time like it’s priceless. Your focus blocks are not negotiable.
Communicate capacity clearly: “I can deliver this or that by Friday, what’s the priority?”
Declare email DND hours: You don’t need to respond at 11:00pm, your laptop can sleep too.
December is not a miracle month, it’s still 30 days. You won’t magically get three quarters’ worth of work done out of sheer Christmas spirit. You deserve joy this season. You deserve to close your laptop without guilt and let your brain soften for a minute. Creativity, strategy, and insight need downtime - your best ideas never show up when you’re overclocked and overtired.
Your work will still be there in January.
Team Toast 🥂
P.S. If you’re noticing our newsletter looks a little different, it’s because we’ve officially made the switch to Beehiiv — new look, same big Toast energy.
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