Why some delays are rest, some are risk, and how to tell the difference before Christmas.
The Christmas aisles went up weeks ago. In offices across the UK, a familiar phrase has started to appear in meetings: "Let's pick that up in the new year."
Sometimes that is exactly the right call. December is short, people are tired, and not everything needs solving before the break. Some decisions genuinely benefit from a pause and a clearer head.
Some of the things being parked, however, are not resting. They are quietly getting more expensive. The difference between the two is rarely obvious in the moment, which is why so many leaders arrive in January with a longer list than they left with in December.
Why Putting Things Off Feels So Good
Putting something off brings instant relief. The difficult conversation, the restructure decision, the development plan for a struggling team member: moved to January, the pressure lifts. For a few weeks, it feels like rest.
The research suggests something else is often going on. A 2022 study reviewed by The Oxford Review looked at what drives procrastination and found that people with a low tolerance for uncertainty were significantly more likely to put things off. So were people who handled difficult emotions by suppressing them rather than working through them.
That matters right now. The Budget has been described as cautious. The Bank of England has just raised interest rates for the first time since 2023. Commentators are debating whether the Prime Minister will need an early general election to secure his own mandate. When the outlook is uncertain, the natural instinct is to wait until it clears.
It rarely clears. Uncertainty is now the operating condition, not a phase to sit out.
“Putting something off is not the same as resting. One restores energy. The other borrows it from January, with interest.”
The Hidden Cost Shows Up in the Numbers
Most of what leaders delay is behavioural, not technical. It is the feedback not given, the decision not made, the conversation avoided. The cost of those delays does not appear on a project plan. It appears in the numbers a few months later.
Retention. A capable person who feels unheard in November is often updating their CV over Christmas and resigning in January.
Productivity. A team waiting for a decision rarely stops working. It works on the wrong things, or works more slowly, while it waits.
Pipeline and plans. January programmes, budgets and priorities are usually shaped in December. Leave the thinking until January and Q1 is already half gone.
This is the heart of what resilience work does in a business. It supports the behaviour change that moves these numbers. When leaders respond to uncertainty with clarity rather than delay, the KPIs that follow tend to look very different.
Sort all your activities into 3 areas. Photo Getty Images Unsplash
Three Categories: Park, Prepare, Act Now
A simple way to sort your end-of-year list is to put each item into one of three categories.
Park it. These are the things that genuinely do not suffer from waiting. A new process that needs fresh eyes. A strategy refresh that depends on next year's numbers. A nice-to-have project nobody is waiting on. Park these with a clear date, and let them go without guilt.
Prepare it. These are things you will act on in January, though the thinking needs to happen now. A team restructure. A hiring plan. A development programme for your managers. Doing the preparation before Christmas means January starts with action rather than another round of discussion.
Act now. These are the items where delay has a real cost. The underperformance conversation that has been put off twice already. The talented team member who has gone quiet. The decision your team has been waiting for since September. If waiting will make it harder, more expensive or more emotional, it belongs here.
One test helps more than any other. Ask yourself: if I put this off until January, will it be the same size, smaller or bigger when I come back to it? If the honest answer is bigger, it belongs in Act Now.
The Items Leaders Most Often Get Wrong
Across coaching conversations with senior leaders, the same kinds of items tend to land in the wrong category at this time of year.
The quiet high performer. Leaders often assume their strongest people are fine because they are not complaining. Quiet can mean content. It can also mean someone who has stopped expecting to be heard. A fifteen-minute conversation before the break costs very little. Finding out in January costs a great deal more.
The decision that needs one more piece of data. There is always one more number to wait for. When the outlook is uncertain, waiting for certainty is a decision in itself, usually the most expensive one available. Most leaders already have enough to make a good decision, or at least a good first step.
The feedback that feels unkind at Christmas. Leaders worry that difficult feedback in December will spoil someone's break. Delivered with care, and with a clear plan, it usually does the opposite. People would rather know where they stand than spend the holiday wondering.
Their own development. Senior leaders are often excellent at planning everyone else's growth and very poor at planning their own. If you want to lead differently in 2027, the thinking about how needs to start before you switch off, not after you return.
Talk to Your Team About What Waits
Sorting your own list is only half the job. Your team is making the same decisions, often without knowing which of their items you consider urgent.
Before the break, share your Park, Prepare and Act Now lists with your team, and ask them to do the same. You will quickly spot the mismatches: the item you parked that they are waiting on, or the item they are anxious about that you had not realised mattered. That single conversation can remove weeks of uncertainty from January, and give everyone a clearer, calmer Christmas.
Reframing Beats Willpower
The same 2022 study found something useful. People who used cognitive reappraisal, the habit of deliberately reframing how they see a situation, were significantly less likely to procrastinate and more tolerant of uncertainty.
In practice, reappraisal sounds like this:
Instead of "This conversation will ruin their Christmas", try "This conversation gives them clarity before the break, rather than a shock in January."
Instead of "We can't decide until we know what the economy will do", try "We can decide what we will do under two or three different scenarios."
Instead of "I haven't got time for this in December", try "I won't have more time in January. I'll have less."
Reframing is not positive thinking. It is choosing a more accurate and more useful way of looking at the same facts. It is also a skill, which means it can be developed.
Where This Sits on The Resilience Wheel
On The Resilience Wheel, this is mostly about Attitude and Adaptability. Attitude shapes how you interpret the situation in front of you. Adaptability is your capacity to keep moving when the conditions are not ideal.
It also touches Energy. Some things should be parked precisely because you need to recover. A leader who never switches off over Christmas is not being resilient. They are running down a battery that the first quarter will need fully charged.
Resilience, as I define it, is Springing Forward with Learning. It is not about bouncing back to where you were. December is a good moment to decide what you are springing forward into, and what you are deliberately leaving behind.
A Practical Exercise for This Week
1. Write down everything you have said, or thought, you will "pick up in the new year".
2. Sort each item into Park, Prepare or Act Now, using the bigger, smaller or same-size test.
3. For each Park item, put a date in your diary for January and let it go.
4. For each Prepare item, decide the one piece of thinking that needs to happen before the break.
5. For each Act Now item, book the time this week. Not next week. This week.
Most leaders who do this find their Act Now list is shorter than they feared, and their Park list longer than they expected. Both are good news. The relief you feel will be real rest, not borrowed time.
The Same Applies to Development
One item regularly lands in the wrong category: leadership development. It gets parked as something for "next year", when the evidence on how behaviour changes says it belongs in Prepare.
Programmes that start in January are designed, agreed and booked in December. Leaders who want to arrive in the new year with better habits need to start building them before the break, not after it. At Cooplands Bakery, the work that delivered more than £500,000 in provable returns started with clear decisions about what needed to change, made well before the programme began.
Christmas is a natural pause. Used well, it is also a natural starting line.
For L&D Professionals
December is when Q1 development plans are either confirmed or quietly deferred. If your organisation is facing a cautious budget, the temptation is to pause leadership development until the picture is clearer. The risk is that the behaviours you most need in an uncertain year, clear decisions, honest conversations and adaptable teams, are the ones left undeveloped. Use the Park, Prepare, Act Now framework with your senior team to decide which development work genuinely can wait, and which will cost more if it does.
Ready to have a conversation?
Find out where your leaders sit on The Resilience Wheel before the new year starts.
Resilient Leadership Diagnostic:
theresiliencecoach.co.uk/resilient-leadership-diagnostic
Read the Cooplands case study:
theresiliencecoach.co.uk/case-study/cooplands
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