Are you winding down this week for the slide into Christmas and the New Year? If you're a small business owner—don’t be tempted! This week is one of the best opportunities to get more done by simply doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing.

Since everyone else seems to be determined to do less, join me in the decision to do more. All you need to do is just one more thing and you’ll be way ahead of the holiday slackers.

If you’re not sure what to do, here are five things you can do that will make you happy you ignored the temptation. You're guaranteed to get more done.

1) Do one more blog article. If you have a blog and you’re not doing at least one article a week, then do one today and you’ve got this week covered. Then do the same next week. If you don’t have a blog, then start one. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, a blog will better position you against your competitors and get your customers to find you.

One of the things on my to-do list for a while now was to do at least two blog articles a week. I was already accepting the idea that this week, the slide into Christmas, I’d be OK with just the one. But then I read an email from Vicky Fraser at www.businessforsuperheroes.com and she lit the fire. No slacking for me this week. Or next.

Give yourself a Christmas present and go here to get her book, Business for Superheroes. Her emails are one of the few I read daily. (I’m not affiliated. She just writes some great, funny, and inspiring stuff that any small business owner should be checking out.)

2) Take one small nagging item from your to-do list and do it this week. Most of us have to-do lists which never seem to shrink. You’ll probably have extra time this week, especially if everyone else is slacking off. Make it a small item so you can be sure to get it done. You’ll be grateful for the sense of accomplishment.

3) Reach out to one lost customer each day this week. “Lost customers" are those who haven’t done business with you in a while, long enough that you’re wondering where they are. At a time of year when we’re encouraged to reach out to the lost, let’s apply that theme to our business.

Use the phone, email, fax, or best of all, a personalized, handwritten letter. Lost for ideas on what to say? Tie it in to the season, just like I did here.

Look at your efforts this way; if you get one customer through your efforts this week, you’ll have more to donate to your charity or cause of choice. All it takes is one contact a day to possibly make a difference.

4) Write that ebook, special report, or white paper you’ve been meaning to write. Or update an old one. These are excellent ways to connect with your prospects and clients. If your business is quiet the next two weeks, use it to your advantage to get one done.

Unsure what to write about? Make a list of all the frequently asked questions you get from prospects and customers. Ask co-workers to contribute to the list. Write down everything.

When you’re done with your list, you’ll see one or more themes you can use to pull the questions together into one book.

If for example, you get frequent questions about how your Super Widget saves production time in a manufacturing operation, your book could be Ten Guaranteed Ways to Beat Your Customer’s Production Deadlines using the Super Widget.

5)Take one day this week to brainstorm with your employees about how to overcome your biggest problem or hurdle. If you’re not sure what that is, brainstorm about that! If you can’t commit to a full day, do it for one or two hours. It will pay off.

Napoleon Hill was the first, I believe, to write about using the idea of the “mastermind” as a resource. Says Hill, a mastermind group is simply the “coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose…No two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.”

Think about how ideas occur when you are collaborating with two or more people. You give and receive ideas and modify them in ways you simply would not and could not do on your own. That is the mastermind effect. It’s as if a third mind, the mastermind, is present when you brainstorm with a common purpose.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t do your own private brainstorming. That too, is equally effective. The difference is that the mastermind group delivers results you cannot get by yourself.

You have a built-in mastermind group within your company. If you’re the owner, you can decide to make it work for you.

That’s your small business challenge for today through the end of the month. What’s the one thing you plan to do this week and next? The marketing ideas above should inspire you to get started. Let us know in the comment section below what you’re doing and how it feels to get more done than anyone else!

One last tip for getting more done in your business: sign up for the Small Business Rainmaker in the box at the bottom of the page.