I’m not anti-Christmas per se. I like the food, the films, the excuse to slow down, but what I don’t like is the pressure to feel festive. Sometimes I can’t switch my brain off, returning to work in January more exhausted than at the end of the prior year.
This year, instead of forcing it, I’ve decided to try something different and ask ChatGPT how to actually enjoy the Christmas holidays without turning them into yet another thing I need to get right.
I expected generic wellness fluff in return. What I got back was… annoyingly sensible.
Accept reality
The first thing ChatGPT told me was to stop trying to optimize Christmas.
That stung, mostly because it was true. I optimize everything. Work, free time, even rest. If I’m not careful, a day off becomes a silent checklist of things I should be enjoying more, and more often than not, I end up spending my “rest” making myself more agitated and burnt out.
The advice was simple: If a day contains a walk, one good meal, and something familiar on TV, that counts. I don’t need a magical moment, don’t need a memory I’ll talk about for years, I just need the day to be fine.
That alone lifted some pressure, and knowing that I’ll be off work for two weeks without the need for every day to feel like the best day ever, was the kind of AI advice I needed.
Make time
Another point that felt very targeted was about structure. Total freedom sounds lovely, but for some people it just leads to low-level anxiety and a weird sense that the day is slipping away. One of those people: me.
The suggestion wasn’t to schedule Christmas, but to anchor it. Wake up roughly the same time, leave the house once, pick one thing you want to do that day, and after that, everything else can drift.
This advice is great, because I was already thinking of planning my time off based on the concept of a book I read a few years ago called Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky.
In the book, the authors talk about how to focus on what matters for the day by simply picking one highlight. And while I’ve really failed to do this throughout the year, hearing AI tell me to feels like the push I need to spend my festive break making time for what matters.
Christmas isn’t like the movies
Instead of aiming for peak Christmas cheer, the advice was to protect one genuinely enjoyable thing per day. Not something you feel obliged to enjoy but instead something you actually want.
A long gaming session, rewatching a comfort film, doing absolutely nothing with your partner, or even planning a future trip. If that happens, the day is a win.
ChatGPT surprised me, to be honest, because normally when I’ve asked it for advice in the past it’s been a hype machine, but now it was telling me to do less, and I really needed to hear that.
I’m not an advocate for using AI as a sounding board for life, but at this time of year many people struggle with the idea of what the holidays are meant to be. Instead, why not take ChatGPT’s advice this year, and do less?
If you’re like me, maybe, just maybe, following ChatGPT’s Christmas advice might make you less of a Grinch this holiday season.
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john-anthony.disotto@futurenet.com (John-Anthony Disotto)
