What To Do with Your Christmas Break

Happy Advent, newsletter friends! I am so grateful for your continuing support of my work. Below I continue a somewhat-annual holiday tradition with a version of my newsletter on what to do with your Christmas break:

A distinctive blessing of academia is that we get more structured time off than just about any other profession. Yes, 30 or so weeks of the year are fairly intense with teaching and grading, but depending on your summer schedule, that leaves a lot of the year, including about 4 at Christmas, when we’re on our own. The challenge is, what will we do with that time?

Self-directed work is a fact of the writer’s life, including those writing dissertations and academic books. The writing battle is often won or lost by what people do with their ‘breaks.’ Many graduate students and even professors never really get out of the undergraduate mindset, which is that once finals are done, you are ‘on break,’ meaning no more work for weeks on end.

When people ask me how I get so much writing done, my thoughts turn to Christmas vacation or summertime, when I have sometimes found myself alone in the academic buildings of a deserted campus. Sure, some people get a ton of work done at home during their breaks. But too many fritter away the weeks, and always seem to come back having gotten much less work done than they intended.

Here are two suggestions I would make for work during a break, especially Christmas and New Year’s: plan what days you will work, and develop specific goals for the break. Soon after grades are submitted, take a look at your calendar. What days are you going to work, even if only for half days?

I am all for taking time off, and traveling to see family. And I know that time in the office is unrealistic for people with kids at home for break. But taking off a whole four weeks seems excessive, if not downright foolish. If you are under the gun with dissertating, or hitting a book deadline, those weeks are a major opportunity not to be squandered.

Second, I would plan to complete at least one major project (chapter, article, etc.) during the break. Write it down, share it with colleagues, whatever it takes - hold yourself accountable for delivering specific outcomes. I also maintain my 1000 words a day goal on days I work - there’s no better time than breaks, with no meetings, classes, and few e-mails, to hit that goal, usually in just a morning’s work.

When you consider the pressures people have in other professions (pastors, doctors, lawyers, etc.), I really don’t see the work I put in over breaks as stressful. Believe me, I watch a LOT of football and movies over Christmas, and plan special trips to art museums, state parks, etc. with my family. But some strategically-chosen days of work in a quiet office, with no distractions, can pay major dividends over the long haul.

Catch up on my PragerU series of 5-minute videos on Colonial America.

“My Top Books of 2025,” at TGC.