Episode 58 | September Reset for a Successful End of Year

Hello, hello, you're listening to the Better Workday podcast with me, Niamh Moynihan.

Welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing? It's the end of August. We are looking towards September, and I can't believe we're here at the end of the summer already. I'll be honest with you, there have been times where I felt it would never end and then other days where it felt like it was moving far too quickly. So all in all, I guess that's a summer well spent. 

And getting back into the podcast, I was a little bit rusty. I think it took me a good I don't know, four or five attempts to get this episode going, but I am glad to be back and I'm looking forward to getting into this topic for you today, which is the idea of taking a minute just to check in on your progress and to maybe reset as we head towards September and the final months of the year. 

So what I'd like to say on that is usually this would be a topic maybe reserved for October, you know, the start of the final quarter and is usually a bit of a push. around that time of the year just to kind of get things going, get things over the line. But I find that often a little bit too late. A lot of the teams and companies that I work with are extremely busy and there's lots of deadlines hitting around October, November time before the year ends. And so there really is no room for catch up. Right. And what usually ends up happening is people are skipping lunch breaks and they're working extra hours to try and cram it in. And if you know me at all, you know, I do not want that.

At all, want to avoid that at all costs. So I think if instead we just take a moment in September, you know, as we head into next few weeks to take stock now and maybe, you know, make any adjustments we need ahead of October, we're increasing our chance of success. We're reducing any unnecessary stress on ourselves and indeed on other people.

And I want to start by reminding you of an idea that I shared back in episode 34. If you haven't listened to that, you can go back and listen to it. I'll put the link in the show notes. I shared this idea of yet and the power of using this little word if you are not where you think you should be in terms of your goals, your projects, the things that you're working towards. 

And the idea from that episode is that, you know, maybe things haven't gone as planned and you haven't achieved what you want to achieve. But by saying, haven't done it yet, it leaves you open to, you know, changing that plan, getting back on track and gives you hope that you can indeed still make your goal. All right. You can still achieve it. And so as we go through this episode, I'd you to keep that in mind. You know, maybe you haven't got there, but it's just because you haven't got there yet. Now, as we take a look at your goals on what you're working towards, these might be a mix of professional goals.

It might be some personal development stuff you're working on, might be some things that you've set for yourself or quite often, you know, it's things that were assigned to you, right? And you're going to be in one of two camps. Either things are going really well, which is great. And if they are, I want you to take a minute to say, actually, any of things are going really well. And as I head into the latter half of the year, I'm going to keep on going as I'm going. 

And that's a really good thing to be able to do, to be able to stop and say, look, you know, things are going well, I'm doing a good job. Or maybe things haven't progressed as much. And if that's the case, don't worry, we're here today to maybe ask a few questions to get you back on track, ⁓ as I said earlier. So the first thing I want you to consider is whether or not things are going well or not, I want you to ask, does this goal or project or target still matter? Is it relevant?

Because we see this time and time again, the start of the calendar year or the start of the fiscal year, there's usually a couple of great initiatives, great ideas that seem brilliant, they seem like they're going to take over the world. And then once we get onto the hood and once we start working on them and on other things, some goals just, they're just not as important anymore. We realize that maybe they're not going to create the impact we thought. We realize that the benefits aren't worth the cost of the investment and so they slide down the scale.

And if you've been working on something and it's no longer as important as it was, it's really good for you to identify this because if you are working away and if you're actually making great progress against a goal, if the goal no longer matters, that's time that you should be spending in other areas. OK, so maybe it's a cue for you to pare back what you're doing or to scale back the effort. 

All right. And of course, if you've been struggling to get movement, to get momentum on it, then this kind of dropping priority could be one of the reasons for that. All right. So it's really, really important to ask, you know, does the gold still matter? So if it was assigned to you by somebody else, have a conversation with them. Just check in, you know, has anything changed? And if it's self-assigned, check in with yourself. And then the next thing we want to ask then, if you're going to continue working on this, is, is your plan still the right plan? All right. So this is something which, you know,

It's hard for us, think, to accept sometimes that our plans were wrong. I know I still struggle with it, even though I talk about this a lot. But we have an idea in our minds of how things are going to go, how long things are going to take, what steps are going to be involved. But you and I both know as soon as you start working in something and on something, the truth of it appears and you find that there's things that need to be done that you didn't know and vice versa, you know, stuff you thought you had to do and you didn't have to do it. And so regardless of how well you're doing on it,

I think it's important just to ask yourself, am I still doing the right stuff? Like, is the plan still the right plan? All right. So, you know, one of those areas for me, I think definitely was around this podcast. I had thought it was going to have to, you know, take me a huge amount of time and effort. And all of that was really kind of creating a bit of a pressure on my week and on my months because, of course, I spent most of my time working with people.

in real time, delivering workshops and sessions online, which I absolutely love. And so I had a plan which was very time intensive, but obviously over the course of doing this over the last kind of over a year now and taking a bit of time to step back and reflect, I've kind of discovered there's a much simpler way to do it that will help me achieve the goals and that I'd be happy with. 

And of course I couldn't have arrived at that without first making the mistakes. I couldn't have got there. Because I've always been wondering, should I do this? Should I do that? All right. So if you're taking a look at a goal and if you're realizing, my God, this is not actually how I should be working on it. It's fine. It's no problem. It's expected. Right. It's totally normal. What you need to know, though, is adapt. OK, there's no point carrying on with the plan once you realize it's excessive or it's not comprehensive enough or it's out of date or whatever. So take a moment.

when you get back to your desk or when you're taking a look at this goal and just update that. And then the next thing is to kind of ask yourself, honestly, do you have the time to work on it? OK, so as I mentioned, if you're doing work on a goal and if you're going really well, if you're maybe even ahead of schedule, then I'd ask yourself, are you spending too much time on this area and perhaps not addressing other areas of your responsibility? All right.

So I'm going to talk about this next week actually, is there's a difference between prioritizing a task and then using it as an excuse to procrastinate on other things. All right. So I just want you to kind of check in on that and make sure that you know, you're not spending excessive time in this area because you're avoiding other things. I've been guilty of that in the past. Like one of the things I had been planning to do for a long time was an online live series and

Oh my goodness. I never found the time to do it. And lo and behold, I put the podcast on pause there for just a little while. And would you believe I ran my first series of Momentum just at the start of the summer. And I'm ready to run my second series starting the 15th of September. So isn't it amazing once you kind of, you know, pull back in areas that maybe don't need to part of the moment, how you create that space to work on what really matters.

By the way, if you do want information on momentum for yourself or your team, I'll put a link to the web page in the show notes and in the description as well. So what I'm saying to is if you are doing really, really well on the goal, if you're spending loads of time on it, I'd ask yourself, are you spending all that time at the cost of something else? And then on the other side, you know, are you crowding out the time for this work with everything else on your list? So a lot of people that I work with, you know, you've got really busy jobs.

You've got lots of responsibilities outside of your job. And then there's these goals or projects that we want to work on. And what usually happens is, you know, all the business as usual stuff and all the meetings and all the commitments from other people, they all get put into the diary. And then we try and find little tiny pockets of time to work on the goals. And you wonder then, you know, why they're not making progress. 

So what I'd like to say to you is if you just decided to spend one hour a week on a goal, right, and put it in the calendar, over the next three months, that'll be 12 hours of effort towards that goal. 12 hours of consolidated effort. Now, if you change that up a little bit and you say, I need a bit more time. And if you just spend 30 minutes per day, half an hour per day, per work day, right, in 12 weeks or three months, you'll have done 30 hours of effort against that, right? That's a lot of effort. That's a lot of time. That's a lot of progress.

So don't think that you need to block off full work weeks or take a month out or, you know, do full offsite days, you know, to achieve something. I know that in some cases that would be wonderful. I know in most cases that's just not going to be something that's going to happen. So instead, just take a look again, depending on the effort that's required and the goal that it is. Maybe you'll do an hour of power once a week on that goal and you'd be surprised with the progress you'll make or just 30 minutes a day, every weekday, and you will make significant effort.

All right. And so again, you know, we're here now heading into September and you might say, well, Niamh, next week and the week after for me, I'm looking at my calendar and they're absolutely packed. And I would say to you, this is exactly why we're looking at this now and not in October. All right. So I want you to go ahead in your calendar, maybe towards the end of September, the start of October and start putting the time in for then. OK, so start putting it in today for three weeks time. 

And by the time, you know, you get to that point, you will have already blocked out the space. and it'll be there waiting for you. All right, so don't worry if you can't, you know, finish this into this episode and dig straight into the work. I know you'd love to do it. That's not always reasonable. So instead, you know, commit to at least blocking off the time for three weeks time to start setting aside those dedicated blocks and you will thank yourself for it when you get there. And look, the final thing to consider, and I touched on this earlier, you know, are you prioritizing some work?

to procrastinate on other stuff. And this is a very tricky one and I'm going to cover it separately next week because I think it's very hard to tell are we prioritizing or procrastinating. They are two sides of the same coin because, you know, prioritizing is doing one thing above another and procrastinating is doing everything except the thing you should be doing. like they're completely linked.

But we have to just be mindful of it and make sure that we're not letting things slide too far and we're not setting ourselves up for stress and overwhelm in the months ahead. In the meantime, what I'd like you to do now is, you know, take a moment, think about the goals that you've been working towards over the last couple of months, couple of quarters, regardless of where you're at with it. It's absolutely fine. You are where you are. The only thing you can do now is move forward. All right. And just decide for yourself, you know, is the goals too relevant? You know, is the plan still the right time? And

Are you scheduling that time?

Thank you for joining me on this week's episode of the Better Workday podcast. If you enjoyed the show, the best way you can support me is by giving the podcast a rating, leaving a comment, sharing this episode and subscribing wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. For more information and to sign up for my mailing list, head over to abetterworkday.com. Thanks again for listening and I'll be back in your ears next week. Until then, stay well and have a better workday.