1. Finish Your Work
There’s always a huge spike in activity before New Year’s – clients want everything done by the cherished date. Many need it for launching holiday promotions and campaigns. Don’t turn down good projects – take on exciting ones and don’t miss out on opportunities.
But manage your energy wisely. Year-end hustle is exhausting, and that final push can lead to burnout and leave you unable to function for a while. So only accept top offers, and factor in time for edits and unexpected delays – which are especially common during the holidays.
By the way, if you’re a web designer, you might find our article on creating Christmas knitted textures in Photoshop helpful.
If you’ve got projects unrelated to Christmas or New Year that can be submitted later, talk to the client and try to move the deadline. It’s better to finish early and delight the client than to work in panic round the clock, sacrificing your health, rest, and holiday.
2. Recalculate Your Rates
Raising your prices is necessary – not only are your experience and qualifications growing, but so is inflation. A good method is to charge slightly more for each new project than you did for the previous one. That way, you progress steadily and confidently. But if that doesn’t work for you and your monthly income hasn’t grown, revise your rates at least once a year. Reflect and decide how much of a fair increase you can make.
But don’t shock your clients with new prices in early January – that's the last thing they want to hear when they’re still recovering from fireworks, champagne, and empty wallets. Set your goals, inform old clients about price changes in advance, and just quote the new rates to new ones.
3. Greet Your Clients
This isn’t about kindness and holiday spirit. Congratulating your clients is smart from a professional standpoint. It builds loyalty and shows you as a positive and attentive person. Definitely skip the generic mass emails – keep it short but personalized.
Don’t just greet current clients – reach out to anyone who could be helpful. Write to clients you enjoyed working with – they might remember you and place another order or recommend you to a friend. If you work with recruiters or agencies, remind them you’re around – they might send you a gig or a big project later.
4. Buy What You Need
Sure, there’s a lot of work before New Year’s, but no one canceled the run for salad ingredients and gifts. Unlike office workers with rigid schedules, you can sneak away during a weekday and shop without lines, chaos, or madness.
Being the savvy type, consider ordering everything online. These days it’s not just gifts and decorations – you can even get groceries delivered. If the pandemic brought us anything good, it’s that delivery services expanded and became super convenient.
5. Get a Motivation Boost
Pause. Take a short break from your endless stream of work and routine. Look at your life from the outside. Is this what you wanted? Is everything perfect? Maybe it’s time to change or add something?
Make a vision board – grab a big sheet of paper or an old poster, print your dreams as pictures and words. They don’t have to be goals for the year – just directions you’d like to grow in. Mark professional and personal goals, both realistic and wildly ambitious.
Life is too short – chase your dreams, set goals, and make them real. Watch an inspiring video from WAYUP founder Andrey Gavrilov, where he shares how to dream the right way:
6. Celebrate Like a Human
Let’s try – at least on New Year’s Eve – to step away from our screens. Dress up, light some sparklers, and spend time with friends and loved ones.
And eat properly – not hunched over your keyboard, skipping utensils. The holidays are the perfect excuse to try fancy dishes or revisit childhood favorites. And you don’t have to cook yourself – visit someone or order from your favorite café, their holiday menus are usually worth it.
If you have a chance to get away from home and change your scenery – take it. And not just on New Year’s Eve. Escape to another city for a few days, work remotely. Then take a walk in the evening and see how they decorated the main street.
7. Let Go of Stress
Reflect on the year and imagine all the bad things staying behind as we enter the new one. Try meditating, go to a sauna or get a massage, give yourself time to relax and decompress. Even two hours spent watching a heartwarming holiday movie under a blanket, with your phone off and some cozy lights or candles, can work wonders. This is your therapy.
We all earned a reward for surviving 2020. Treat yourself. Let it be something you’ve wanted for a while – maybe a silly mug with a reindeer, or a sweet gift box like in childhood. Or something more meaningful – you deserve gifts that are special, long-awaited, and no-compromise.
We’ve prepared surprises too – as part of our “WAYUP Holiday Tale” promo, you can grab several training programs with discounts up to 50%. The WAYUP team wishes you a year of achievements, victories, and bold new horizons!