🎄 Your End of Year Survival Kit

In partnership with

Hey there! Welcome back to The Flow by Flocus. If you’re new around here, welcome! 👋  You can catch up on our previous editions right here.

This week: Buckle up, besties: we’re bracing ourselves for the end-of-year crunch. Whether you’re studying for finals, wrapping up Q4 deadlines at work, or cramming in domestic duties before the holidays, we’ve got your EOY survival guide ready to go. Our top 12 methods for getting things done, maintaining focus, and minding your mind. Let’s dig in!

🤨 Getting Things Done

Practical productivity tips for those intense work and study sessions.

🪴 Pruning your task list

Do this one first, because chances are your task list is too long. Here are 3 of our top to-do list tips:

• 🍱 Know the difference between a single task (like choosing your research topic) and a project with multiple steps (like finishing your essay).

• 📋 Consider deadline, impact, effort, energy, and blockers for each task. Prioritizing according to effort and energy, rather than urgency and deadline, can help you get through those low days.

• 📁 Create a dedicated space for low-priority stuff that needs to get done but doesn’t have a deadline and isn’t super urgent or impactful. This keeps your actual to-do list clear for the big stuff.

📑 Handling life admin

Bill payments, job applications, doctor’s appointments — these are just a few examples of the life admin stuff that feels “extra” but still has to get done at some point.

These tasks are tedious and constant, but they’re also mandatory for most of our goals. They tend to pile up around the end of the year as everyone scrambles to close out the semester / quarter.

If life admin is weighing you down this season, plan a couple of “power hours” to blast through some of it. For the big stressors, add some softness (your favorite drink, a cozy playlist) or invite a friend to make it a little more fun.

🛤️ Getting back on track

Life is filled with obstacles, distractions, and curveballs that will knock us off track at some point. Even if we successfully avoided them all, we’d miss out on major life lessons along the way.

Resist the urge to beat yourself up when you stumble or fall — that’s where the learning happens. Stand up, brush yourself off, and keep walking your path.

If it feels tricky, imagine your journey as a real train on a track, with you as the driver. If you veer off track, try putting on the brakes, “announcing” any delays to the next “station”, or finding a shortcut or detour.

🧮 Multiplying vs. managing your time

If you find yourself feeling bored or stagnant during that “liminal” week between Christmas and New Year’s, why not find some ways to multiply your time?

Unlike time management, which simply assigns time to different tasks, a time multiplier frees up time and brainpower for both current and future you.

Examples: Setting up email filters to automatically organize your inbox, creating templates for repetitive work, adding reminders for routine tasks like changing your toothbrush

Real quick: Looking to build healthier habits for 2026? Don’t miss out on Livelong, a free weekly guide to science-backed wellness and longevity insights.

Here’s a quick message from them 👇️

Your body will thank you.

Join 74,000+ health enthusiasts for fresh, evidence-based guidance on the pillars of longevity, including movement, nutrition, sleep, and coping mechanisms—all translated from new studies. No fads. No hype. Just health strategies rooted in the latest science. Improve your health and live a longer, happier life by accessing information that empowers you.

SIGN UP for FREE

Checking out Livelong not only supports your long-term health, but also helps our tiny team keep delivering value straight to your inbox.

Now, here’s the rest of your end-of-year survival kit!

🏁 How to Maintain Focus & Momentum

Things you can do to conserve your concentration and keep it moving.

🍵 Make regular breaks non-negotiable

We say it all the time, but your brain needs a break at least once every 2 hours. Even if it’s just a quick trip to the kitchen for a glass of water, adding transitions between study and work sessions resets your energy and maintains your momentum.

Think of your brain like a luxury car. It’s sophisticated, and it’s powerful — but it’s not invincible. Driving on an empty tank or a bad tire will lead to a crash eventually. And remember, even the world’s best drivers still have to take regular pit-stops!

🛑 Know your roadblocks

We often compare obstacles in life to hurdles, or small barriers you can jump over easily. But there are actually 4 types of roadblocks: stumblers, hurdles, brick walls, and fortresses.

Stumblers and hurdles include the smaller stuff that trips you up, like forgetting to attach a file to an email or getting rejected for a job. You can find your way around these without too much trouble: send the attachment in a follow-up, apply for a different job.

Brick walls and fortresses are much bigger obstacles that are harder to break through. They may require extra time, tools, and help from a team. Retaking an exam you missed due to an illness is an example of a brick wall or fortress.

When you’re faced with an obstacle, figure out which of these 4 categories it belongs to, and the way through will become much clearer.

😌 Let it be good enough

A harsh truth: You won’t be able to complete every single one of your tasks as thoroughly as you’d like. And most stuff doesn’t need to be perfect, either.

This holiday season, practice embracing the concept of “done, not perfect.” Because “good enough” really is good enough 95% of the time. So save the perfectionism for the 5% of stuff that really deserves the extra care and attention.

🪁 Romanticize it

Romanticizing your life means treating yourself like the main character. “Decorating” your days with small touches that reflect your personality is a great way to reduce stress and add more color and beauty to your life.

A few ideas: Be your own stylist and put together a look that makes you feel fierce. Treat each day like a new “episode” of your very own “TV show”. Give it a title, or divide your life into seasons or eras. And feel free to take inspo from your fictional faves.

The possibilities to get really playful with it are endless. You’re not a chemistry student cramming for finals — you’re a scientist poring over tomes filled with ancient wisdom!

🧠 How to Look After Your Mind

Ways to strengthen your emotional resilience this holiday season.

🫂 Try trusting yourself

Here’s a stone-cold fact: You’ve survived every single curveball and obstacle life has thrown your way. Every single one.

So whatever you’re facing now, you have what it takes to make it through. You’re a capable, driven person with big dreams and goals. And even if you feel lost or stuck, you’ve always found a way through in the past. Trust that you will this time, too.

🚦 Remember that every task has a defined end

This end-of-year crunch might feel endless. And sure, certain things, like caregiving tasks, truly are ongoing.

But most of the stuff on your plate is temporary and finite. After it’s done, you might not ever have to revisit or think about it ever again.

Keep this in mind as you race to the finish line. You got this!

💆‍♀️ Know what makes you vulnerable and how to self-soothe through it

Earlier this year, we talked about 2 therapy techniques that are sure to come in handy this season: identifying your vulnerability factors and self-soothing.

A vulnerability factor is anything in your environment (internal and external) that prevents you from performing at 100%. Examples: hunger, improper sleep, living in a noisy area.

Identifying your vulnerability factors can help you treat yourself with gentle respect and compassion. Self-soothing, on the other hand, gets you through the things you can’t fix or change right away.

Using the 6 senses (including movement), self-soothing is all about doing things purely because you enjoy them, without apology or judgment. Eating your fave snack or bingeing your fave anime are just 2 examples.

😵‍💫 Let the day be weird

With the holidays coming up, you’re bound to have some “weird” days for any number of reasons.

Maybe your schedule is clear and you don’t know what to do with yourself. Or everything is going wrong and the whole universe seems to be against you. Or you’re completely drained from holiday happenings and need a duvet day to recover.

When things get weird, try to relax, unclench, and relinquish control. Release that urge to steer in a different direction, and just flow with it.

If it feels hard, keep this reminder in your back pocket: Hold onto your days too tightly, and the pain in your hands might be the only thing you have to show for it in the end.

🪅 Flocus Picks

A curated list of things worth sharing.

• 3 Life Lessons (The Flow Archives) — As you prepare to wave goodbye to 2025, read our top 3 life lessons we wish we could share with our younger selves

• 4-hour study sesh with lofi and Pomodoro breaks (Video) — Need a body double for work? Get cozy and settle in for your sesh with Emmalilyn

• classical music when you’re on a deadline (Video) — Two hours of energetic classical tunes to power your busy days

✨ Flocus: Your Personal Productivity Dashboard

December is chaotic enough, and your tools shouldn’t be. Flocus gives you a calm, beautiful space to sort your tasks, highlight what actually needs your attention and create a cozier workflow for the end of the year.

Whether you’re studying, sprinting for Q4 or winding down, it’s the dashboard that meets you where you’re at.

Go to Flocus

We’ve got a dedicated newsletter for each of the 12 methods you just read about! Explore The Flow archives (or search your inbox) for a deeper dive.

What’d you think of our EOY survival kit? We leafed back through some of our past newsletters to pull our greatest hits — we hope they help you as much as they’ve helped our team!

Until next Sunday,

Flocus Team