After some summer rest and recovery, take a moment to action these three strategies so you can make the most of the rest of the year, end 2024 on a high and be in the best possible position to make 2025 your most successful year yet.
Be brutal with your priorities for the next 4 months
Four months to the end of the year sounds like a good chunk of time, but in order to guarantee you make the best use of the available time, you need to drill down into a little more detail.
Look at your calendar and count up how many working days you have between now and the year end. Make sure the final total takes account of the number of vacation days that are appropriate to underpin your optimum performance for every single day that you work.
So, if your ideal schedule is to work Monday to Friday so you can keep the weekends free for rest, recovery and enjoying life, and you're having one week off between now and the end of the year, you're left with roughly 75 days to make work count.
Now that you know the reality of how many days and even how many hours you have to contribute for the next 4 months, write down the top 3 priorities / absolutely essential must dos / best use of your time priorities.
Remind yourself of this list every day, and review your progress and update your action plan every week.
One final thing to consider here is that if you agree with the idea that we all have a finite amount of focus each day for our truly best work - this being around 4 hours - what you're really looking at is 300 top quality hours for the rest of 2024.
It's imperative that you use them wisely!
Choose your attitude and practice it every day
We’re entering a busy period. Which often begins with good energy and great intentions but sometimes declines into a ‘let’s just get to the end of the year’ mentality by the time the end of October rolls around. Opting for this type of survival mode can compromise performance, results and motivation across November and December.
This year, try something different.
Instead of visualising October, November and December becoming progressively busier, more overwhelming and increasingly reactive, to the point where you’re resigned to just getting to Christmas, decide now how you want to feel at the end of the year and, crucially, what physical and mental state do you want to be in - both professionally and personally - by the time 2025 arrives.
Too often we speak to people who are already anticipating fatigue, frustration and stress towards the end of they year. And of course, if this is what they focus on, this is what they get.
But we also know people who focus on accepting, adapting and conquering challenging periods. Which is then what happens. The added bonus being that every period of success they experiences boosts their confidence exponentially.
Identifying and focusing regularly on your mindset for success will help inform the daily decisions that optimise your time, energy and efforts. It also helps prevent you spending time and energy on the wrong things and you'll notice unproductive thoughts and habits fall out of your schedule.
Consolidate the lessons from the year so far
Before you dive in to the busy-ness of September, take some time to review the year so far. This is a fast-track method of defining new strategies to make the next 4 months as effective as possible.
Recall the times during 2024 when you were most successful / effective / happy. What was your state of mind at these times, what was going on in your life? How can you bring more of these thoughts and behaviours into the future?
Also analyse when you were busiest / most challenged and think about what you may have done differently during these periods to make them a little easier.
These learnings will be a key part of your professional persona for the coming months. If it helps you can organise your thoughts into two lists, one headed 'do more of this' and the other 'do less of this'.
Final thought
Doing things differently can feel daunting if you're try to make dramatic adjustments in your approach all in one go. But if you take time right now to consider the above and then are able to manage even small steps of progress each day for the next four months you'll be amazed at what you will have achieved by the end of the year.
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