It’s been a year. Twelve months ago, you stepped into January with a fresh set of goals with a plan for how you were going to achieve them. As the weeks turned to months, you may have re-evaluated those plans and adapted where you needed to, and recommitted to the things that still made sense. Year end is now so close you could almost brush against it with the tips of your fingers.
You may or may not have achieved those goals. You may have dropped a few by the wayside or extended deadlines on others. You might be working on setting a new set of targets for the span of 12 months that lie just ahead. But wait. Before you jump into readiness for another calendar year, take the time to finish this one right.
Now is the time to assess what’s on your to-do lists – both short-term and long-term – that needs to be attended to sooner, rather than later. Identify priority projects. What must be completed before the world slows down a bit for the final week of the year? What needs to be finished before accounting closes the books on this current calendar and opens a fresh slate for January? What ducks need to be in a row before the ball drops on December 31st? It could be less than you think, and sure, it could be even more than you were planning. You won’t know without taking the time to assess the open tabs before you.
Focus on finishing the things you must. Wrap up the other things you can. Decide what to do about the rest. Do you carry them over into the new year? Can they be delegated? Are they worth keeping open or were they just something you included on the list because you thought they should be there, even though they don’t need the attention you thought they did?
Before you set a new round of goals and targets, take the time to honestly evaluate the previous 12 months. Now is the time to take stock of where you’ve been. What’s been successful? What has been a challenge? What goals did you need to abandon and why? What things did you find yourself needing to tend to that you didn’t plan to make space for? Be brutally honest with yourself. Don’t look for the answer you want. Don’t massage the truth to fit into the narrative you think you should have.
Why did you fail to meet certain goals? Were they unrealistic to begin with? Are there skills or market conditions you need to align with to meet the targets you had envisioned? What worked this past year? What didn’t? What changes need to be made to reach the goals you prioritize? What should you be aiming for?
For most of us, the office is closed for at least two days between now and the start of the new year. Maybe there are more days off – either time the entire company is closed or PTO time you’ve stored up for this very moment. There are weekends, too. In other words, you’ve got some down time. Take it. Use it. Don’t squish in more work. Don’t use that downtime to finish off a few more to-dos. Take the break. You benefit from making space to rest and refresh.
In the process of evaluating what’s left to do and what lies ahead, make space to celebrate the wins. Don’t stop there, though. Take the time to celebrate progress. You might not have closed the loop on all the targets you set out to hit at the start of the year, but you moved the ball down the field. Celebrate that.
Celebrate the moments you had to pivot, because you learned and grew from that experience. Celebrate the ability to adapt and respond to curveballs. Reflect on what helped you reach these wins and what facilitated forward momentum. What can you do to amplify those things in the new year?
When your head is down and you’re pressing ahead, the clutter can accumulate. There may be stacks of paper piled on the edges of your desk. The wall space in front of your workspace might be loaded with random sticky notes to help you remember the things you were trying to keep tabs on. Your email inbox is pressing the edges of reasonable limits (or maybe it’s already pushed past those limits.) Your cloud space is full of drafts and revisions and documents with names like “Final,” “for real final,” and “actually final final.”
Before you head into a fresh new year, clean up the space. Toss what you don’t need. Keep what you do. File, organize, get things in order before you jump into the new year.
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