Are You Ready to Cross the Finish Line?

The end of the year is closer than you think. Okay, sure. The leaves haven’t changed colors yet on the trees and your kids haven’t even broached the subject of Halloween costumes. However, we are fast approaching the start of the fourth quarter and all that comes with it. Now is the time to start making preparations to cross the finish line strong. 

Review and Adjust

Remember those goals and targets you set for yourself and your team earlier this year? What kind of progress have you made toward achieving them? Now is a good time to revisit your earlier plans and evaluate not just your progress but whether or not these goals are still goals you want to work towards. 

Carve out some time to review those earlier plans. Make adjustments where you need to. Maybe the target isn’t realistic. Maybe it is but the path you laid out to achieving it needs to be tweaked. Adjust where you need to before you’re in the final days of the year. 

Celebrate

By this point you’ve likely completed some of your annual goals or at least you’ve made great progress on some of them. Celebrate your success! Giving space to relish the wins can be a great way to motivate yourself and your team to press forward on some of those harder, more demanding goals that are still outstanding.

Get Organized

Those last few weeks of the year can quickly become chaotic. Take the time now to get organized. Review and organize your unwieldy email inbox. Go though the files on your network drive or the papers stacking up in folders on your desk. Schedule visits with your big clients or your vendors or your team members before the year-end gatherings fill up calendars. Pull together the stack of receipts you need to complete your overdue expense reports before the rush. This is the time to get your work life in order so you can manage the delicate balance between year-end festivities and year-end workload with a little room to breathe. 

Take Time Off

Does this sound familiar? It’s December and you just realized that you haven’t used half your PTO. You can’t roll it over to the new year. You’re having trouble finding time to squeeze them in because there’s a stack of tasks that must be completed before New Year’s Eve and, even if you had the space in your schedule, you’re not the only one trying to grab time off at this point. You’ve got to balance your days out of the office with everyone else’s. Don’t end up in that space. Take some of those days off now. Enjoy the warm days of early Autumn. Take off one or two of those school holidays that aren’t also work holidays. You’ve got the PTO available. Use it. 

Get Down to Business

You know that project you’ve been procrastinating, the one you’d rather ignore a bit longer. Right. That one. Now is the time to do it. Finish reading this article and then jump into that task. You’re out of time to delay. It is the time to get it done. 

Jump Start Next Year

Sure, you’re not done with this year’s goals and objectives, but now is a good time to start prepping for the next round. As you complete or revise this year’s targets, consider what’s next. Make space to evaluate your long-term plans and what steps you need to be taking to get there. You’ve got time to revise those annual goals before committing, sure, but start the process today. Map out a set of measurable milestones to help you reach them with achievable deadlines.