Holiday seasons is upon us. We will be showered with hundreds of gift offers - each of them more alluring, more desirable, more irresistible.
The anxiety of selecting holiday gifts is a psychological burden, recognised by experts. This article is aimed to ease that burden by sharing three ideas for gifts under 10 dollars in terms of money, but priceless in terms of the value to your loved ones.
The gift of self-awareness: A Psychology test - for you and/or your loved ones
“It's much easier to live, work and play with someone when you truly understand who they are.”
This is the promise for taking a simple 15 minute psychology test, developed by a team of highly renowned clinical and research psychologists, lead by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Peterson is best known for his best-selling book “12 rules of life: An antidote to chaos”, but he has authored or co-authored other 100 academic research articles on various topics. His lectures on YouTube were viewed over 200 million times.
The test Big Five Aspect Scale is a comprehensive, open-source 100-item personality measure, which is scored so that a person will receive information about five major personality traits and their ten aspects. You will be presented with a series of phrases, such as “carry out my plans,” “respect authority,” and “like to solve complex problems,” and asked to indicate your agreement or disagreement with those phrases as they apply to you, typically and personally. After taking the test you receive a comprehensive report at the cost of USD 9.95.
You can take the test yourself or send it as a gift. The site also offers to create a relationship/couple report with your romantic partner. All you need to do after completing your assessment, is to send to your partner’s email an invitation to take the test and then follow the instructions to get a relationship report.
Read here about a free alternative of another psychology test, aimed at revealing are you an introvert or an extrovert and why it matters?
The gift of a good night rest: An alarm clock
Over 3.5 billion people use smartphones in 2020, and projected 3.8 in 2021, based on information from Statista. In fact there are more smartphones on the planet than there are people. Research shows that 90% of 18-29 year olds sleep with their smartphones and 95% of people use their phone just before going to bed. Half of the people check their phones if they wake up at night. In the meantime sleep deprivation is one of the most common problems that could be resolved, to some extent, by leaving the phone in another room. “But I need my phone at night, it is my alarm clock”, many people say apologetically. No, you don’t. A good-old alarm clock could not only be good to your sleep, but an elegant accessory to your nightstand. Give someone (or yourself) this priceless gift of sleep, easily available for less than 10 dollars.
The gift of time: A book with helpful time management tips
You need to make a judgement call on this one - which book, which author. There are many on the market with helpful tips, but also many bad copy-cats. In the different countries the cost of the few books mentioned below can be below or about the value of 10 dollars depending on various factors:
Getting things done - by David Allen - this is a timeless classic, based on which thousands of articles, videos and books were created. I give credit for knowing this book to Luboslava Uram, a successful corporate top manager, who always seem to manage, family, career and time zones with flying colours.
Make time - How to focus on what matters every day - by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky - lots of tips and frameworks to apply in everyday life and feel a bit more in control. I was first introduced to this book by watching about it on the YouTube channel of a UK doctor Ali Abdaal.
Atomic Habits - by James Clear - the book is useful for giving a simple model for rethinking our daily habits so that we can free up more time for what matters more to us.
I hope these ideas offer you a small victory in the effort to ease the holiday anxiety, especially now, in this unprecedented time that is the year of 2020.
Victory Corners 2020, by Viktoriya V. Blazheva
P.S. Please don’t buy anything if you do not see real value for you or your loved ones in it. The author does not receive any financial gain from suggesting the above mentioned gifts neither aims to receive such.