The key to a successful and less-stressful Thanksgiving is to simplify the menu and focus on essentials, according to a 2005 "Management Analysis" by Bain & Co.
The analysis was done at the prompting of The Wall Street Journal.
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Bain responded to a Journal inquiry by conducting market research, polling 280 Bain employees about Thanksgiving.
What it found was that the overwhelming majority of people experience stress about the Thanksgiving holiday. The biggest single source of stress: meal preparation.
So Bain recommends concentrating on the essentials: turkey, stuffing, and gravy. Everything else can be outsourced — or "guest-sourced."
Another piece of advice: postpone complexity.
"For example, create a vegetarian version of the stuffing by using vegetable stock and adding sausage to a portion at the end, thereby avoiding the need for multiple stuffing dishes," Bain explains.
You can read the entire pdf of the presentation here.
Hope you have a Thanksgiving Day with lots of postponed complexity.
Source: Bain Capital
Bain Thanksgiving 2005
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