Suggestion: do your end of year reviews, retrospectives, lessons learned, and the like BEFORE holiday breaks, if you usually do it afterward.
Advantages:
✅ “Closes” the year before holiday, leaving your mind free to enjoy the holidays without background bothers and the potential stress.
✅ Allows your mind to work on things in the background … potentially providing new insights that a prolonged rest period can generate.
✅ You can make changes now that take energy and mental effort that might drain/reduce momentum at the beginning of the year.
If you do your annual review combined with planning before the end of the year, make room for an additional short plan review at the beginning of the year.
Why do that if you just “did” planning? To check if the second advantage above – new insights – means you may need some changes to your plans.
Don’t “race” into and out of a holiday period … let the holiday work for you while you don’t work 😀