Your 5-Item Get-Real New Year's Checklist

BOSTON (MainStreet) -- You know what you're going to do for New Year's, right? Where you'll be at midnight, who you'll be kissing or how you plan to get to that point, what you'll be drinking and where, maybe what you'll be watching, even how you'll be pursuing the traditional resolutions once New Year's Day is history.

But between now and that moment is likely a blur -- always has been, always will be -- a wasted week in which people bide time between the Christmas and New Year's holidays. A poll by flexible-workspace expert Regus showed that 39% of business respondents expect little to be accomplished during the week, and that 58% thought staff would be using the time just to catch up on unfinished tasks. And that's according to 3,000 U.S. workers from among 12,000 business people surveyed in 85 countries.

>>13 Smart Things to Do Before Year-End

But it's more than business that's slowed to a crawl for these few days, but civic life as a whole. And there's more to do than just move paper around your desk and forward links to YouTube videos to similarly indolent friends.

Consider this your last wake-up call and last chance to do a few vital things before Dec. 31, including the things you'll be wishing you did in now when your brain finally comes out of hibernation in late January. Or February. Or the spring.

Whenever you realize it, you'll be kicking yourself if you don't get to these few items on the end-of-the-year checklist:

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