 Hi everybody, Jeff Watts here and welcome to my December newsletter. I hope you're all getting ready for the holiday season and a well-earned break, a well-earned rest, and hopefully a sense of celebration after what's been, let's say, a challenging year for most of us. And the last thing you really want to be doing when you've got some time off from work is checking work. So my first thing is a few tips on how you can successfully take a proper break and switch off from work over the holiday period. The first thing you can do is stop taking on new commitments now. If there's a chance that you can't finish it before the holiday break, put your energy instead on getting the things that are currently in progress to done. Then for each of those things that are in progress, put them on a list. Make a list of everything that you've got ongoing and for each of those things, work out what you need to do by when so that you can comfortably put that in a box until you come back in January. And in that same box, put down what specifically you're going to do when you do start back again because then you'll be able to rest easy knowing that you've got a plan in place. You don't have to keep that thing in your mind, it's in hand. The next thing you can do is publicize your availability and more importantly, your unavailability. Let people know that you're not going to be around. Be firmer than you normally would. Don't put unless it's in an emergency or in case you really need me, I will do this. Now be firm, I'm not going to be available on these. I won't be checking my emails during this time. If you need to give a phone number, then make sure you've got a voicemail set up on there so that you can let people go through and you've got another message there, telling them when they can expect you to get back to them. Another good tip is to put your devices somewhere inaccessible. So the temptation is significantly reduced for you to just pick them up, open them up, open the app. Maybe stick them in the loft or the shed or delete work email accounts or apps from your devices. There's also settings in your devices that can limit your amount of screen time on particular apps. And then finally, tell people that you care about what you're planning to do and why it's important to you to be able to switch off. It's important to pick people that you actually care about because those people will be willing to help you by holding you to account there and you'll feel bad if you let yourself down when people that you care about know that you're planning to do that. So a little bit of personal accountability you're building into the process. So there's some tips for how to switch off from work. Before you do though, there's a chance for you to win some stocking fillers for your teammates. Now I have a number of milestone card decks. So the cards that are at the back of my team mastery book, I've created as a separate deck so that you can just buy the cards. And what I'm doing is giving you the opportunity to win one deck for every member of your team, up to 13 people. That's how many come in the box. So all you need to do is you need to post on social media about a recent milestone that your team has hit in their growth towards team mastery. Use that hashtag, team mastery, and then tag me. Whatever social media channel you use, you can find my tag, whether it's on Instagram or YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, whatever you choose, you can pretty much find my social media tag. So make sure that the hashtag is in there, hashtag team mastery, and my tag, and then why it's important in your team's development this milestone that you've done. And then I will randomly select a lucky winner to win 13 or so decks of team mastery milestone cards. Exciting! In last month's newsletter, I mentioned there are a few things coming up, such as a Spanish translation of scrum mastery, a slimline version of the team mastery book, and a new website. They're all in progress. The translation has been put back until early Q1, and there is a reason for that. I'm not allowed to tell you what that reason is just yet, but it's exciting. So if you're waiting for the Spanish version of scrum mastery, you're going to have to wait a little bit longer, but it'll be worth it. The website should be live by the end of this week, so I'm hoping that that goes down well, but do let me know your thoughts. And maybe you thought coronavirus would mean that you got away without me and Paul singing this year, but it's going to take more than shut studios to keep us from ruining another Christmas classic. This year? Well, I'm not going to tell you what it is. You're going to have to find out. If you go to my YouTube channel, it will be there. And what I want you to do is want you to watch it, enjoy it, share it with people, but most importantly, donate to a good cause. We've picked one. Well, our patrons have picked one. It's a fantastic charity called Reach. There's a QR code embedded in the video so you can just scan it and it'll take you to a place where you can donate really easily. If you prefer to donate to another charity, absolutely fine. We're not checking it. We just want some good to come out of this nonsense that we're doing. Hopefully it'll make a few people smile as well in what has been a pretty dreary year on the whole. And finally, if you're looking for some one-to-one coaching to start 2021 or is it 2021 with a bang, give yourself a boost for the new year, then check out my heavily discounted coaching taster sessions so you can get some help in pursuing whatever goals you have for next year. That's it for me, everybody. Have a fantastic Christmas and a fantastic new year. And I'm absolutely certain that 2021 is going to be a significantly better year for all of us. For now, make sure you switch off and enjoy your time at home.