At this time of year, it’s easy to get swept up in the frenzy rather than the festive. The weather outside may be frightful, but you’ve barely got time to notice with the chaos of the holidays in full swing. To help you stay organized and relaxed, we’ve got these three tips:

1. Don’t split your efforts

Multi-tasking is a myth. You can do little bits of tasks to move them forward, working on them in quick succession, but you can’t actually do two things at once. It’s impossible.

Thus, splitting your time between two tasks will often give you more room for distractions than anything else. Although it can give a false sense of economy—that you’re achieving two things at once—it’s more likely you’re taking longer to get things done. By the time your brain adjusts to the new task, you’ve lost valuable productivity.

To stay calm and productive, just focus on one thing at time. Stick with it. Close all of the other tabs that don’t relate to this task and concentrate wholeheartedly on the next goal within this project.

2. Be careful with your time

If you need to run personal related errands in your day, then ensure you block off your calendar. When you’re at home, it’s easy to make plans for the next day—that you’ll get out of the office during lunchtime to crush a few tasks. But, when the intensity of work ramps up, we all know what happens. That stuff gets pushed to the side, and you’re simply more stressed when you get home.

If you’ve made a game-plan to chug through your checklist, then stick to it. Else you’re just going to find things piling up. And if all of your work/life goals aren’t achievable in your set period of time, then be realistic; cut something out, reduce the complexity, or delegate it to someone else. 

3. Work a weekend day

No, I don’t mean on top of your working week! Take a look at your calendar and see if it makes more sense to work a weekend day when you’ve got few (or no) commitments. Work that day and take off a weekday in lieu. When you do this over the holidays, it feels like time is magically generated! Running errands takes less time and it’s way less stressful because there are fewer cars on the road and people on the streets.