Timely Xmas shopping
Plan, choose & give well this year; you have 19 days...
Please forward this email on, if you consider it a gift worth giving.
A Christmas present can be magical.
In 1987, I was eight and I loved chess. At that time, chess computers were in their infancy but they were still more than a match for club players and under-tens. I dearly wanted to get one and play one. I’d been communicating to my mum a specific wish for a Kasparov Chess Computer Plus By SciSys (the very model in the image above) for some time, and the signs were good. She took me to Currys and she got it for me. I still remember the conversation with the chatty store manager (who offered us a discount because it was a display copy and missing the pieces, which he had to order separately). We got it back home just before Xmas and it sat there on a side table, pristine and tantalising, but empty and unusable. Desperate to play it somehow, I tried putting some wooden travel pieces from another set onto the computer board. The pieces slotted in perfectly and it was stunning: light wooden pieces on plastic, gold/charcoal squares. The pegs were too short to reach the sensors underneath the board, so I used the thin handle of a comb to overcome that obstacle too. At last, I could play a game. And another. And another. I get chills thinking about the joy of it, even now, decades later.
But such joy is rare. Xmas present receiving and giving often doesn’t feel all that special. It’s commercial and transational and we mostly don’t do it very well. We end up doing much of it last minute. And that’s because we procrastinate.
Procrastination is common. We procrastinate over study, exercise, tasks, DIY. We procrastinate about shopping for Xmas gifts. Four-fifths of us leave Xmas shopping to the week before the 25th.
The consequences are as unwelcome as they are predictable:
A growing, looming pressure and stress throughout December becomes acute a few days before Xmas Day.
Rushed decisions. The quality of choices we make is poor. We feel an uneasiness giving the presents we give. Recipients of the gifts are unmoved by them. 45 per cent of last-minute shoppers said they’ll give a print-out photo of the gift or an IOU note as a placeholder until the gift arrives. How awful!
Not-quite-right gifts. This year, many of us have smaller budgets for gift-buying.
An unpleasant shopping experience, jostling with other shoppers in densely packed stores and long queues at checkout.
In-store and online, stock runs out.
The day this email went out there were 19 days before Xmas. It needn’t and shouldn't catch us by surprise. Xmas present choosing and shopping is the kind of avoidable rush that should really be a relaxed pleasure. With some light organisation we can remove most of the stress and sprinkle a little magic.
Some basics most of us miss
Plan. Create a timebox now in your calendar for planning presents. Take an hour. When that hour comes, list (a spreadsheet is ideal) all the people you want to buy gifts for and, next to each name, several ideas for each person. ChatGPT can provide useful ideas and inspiration.
Update. Set a second timebox to come back to this list 48 hours later. When you do, you’re likely to have some fresh, better ideas; your subconscious has been at work at it for two days of thinking and two nights of sleeping.
Purchase. Schedule time to get the presents in-store and/or make sure your online purchases are made early enough that you’ll get the goods in time.
Relax. Enjoy the remaining days of December, and look forward to the joy your carefully chosen gifts will bring.
This approach and method also applies to birthdays, anniversaries, other celebrations and observances — any gift-buying occasions. The difference is that the 25th December is already etched into our minds (in countries and cultures where it’s prevalent). With personal events that aren’t shared with everyone else, you’ll need to set a reminder. A recurring timebox is the perfect means of doing that — a gift that keeps on giving.
