A mid-year review can show progress and help you stay on track
We often set big goals at the beginning of the year, either in our personal lives or for our work, but they can get lost in the shuffle of daily life.
Revisiting them halfway through the year gives you a chance to see where you are. And remember, if your goals aren’t looking too great, you still have six months left to turn these around!
In 2020, For Impact Coach, Julia Capon wrote a post on doing a mid-year reset and the tips she shared were fab (even if that year we all had our year reset for us by the COVID curveball no one saw coming).
So, as we hit mid-winter and pass the shortest day, we thought we’d give them a new space and encourage you all to try a mid-year reset.
Mid-year reset…. GO!
#1. Get that list out.
If you wrote some goals at the start of the year, dig that list out (if you had ideas but didn't write them down, scribble them down now – loads of research says even committing goals to paper makes them up to 1.4 times more likely to happen).
#2. Reflect.
Take 15 to 30 minutes to see how things have gone over the past 6 months. Are you still aligned with the goals you set at the beginning of the year, and where might you need to make change? For bonus points, make it fun! Get out from behind your desk and have some focused time with just you and your goals.
When you look at your goals, ask the following questions:
What did I expect the year to look like, and how has it changed? For some of you, it may be a huge change to what you had planned, for others, it might be pretty much life as usual.
How far have you come with your goals? If you could give your progress bar a percentage, where would you be?
Why did you set this goal? What did you want to achieve? I love exploring the why of goals. If you have a goal, to make it even more powerful, make sure to add "So that..." to the end.
What has gone well? Where have you reached your goal, and what has made it possible?
Where are you struggling? Note, this isn’t about beating yourself up over not achieving these goals - these have been pretty exceptional times so it’s ok to be off track - but do look for the barriers that you may have built up around why you can’t achieve these goals, dig into where this came from and look at how you can overcome it in the next 6 months.
#3. Reset
Once you’ve done a good review and gotten into the reasons why you may not be hitting some of the goals, it’s time to decide on what you DO want to do next, and push reset for the next six months.
Does each goal still make sense, or do they need an edit? Maybe priorities have changed, and you need to assess if this goal is still important now?
Are your goals balanced? Set one goal for the next quarter for various areas in your life, e.g one goal for health, work, finance, learning, relationships and whatever other categories resonate with you. Focusing on just one thing in each category can really help you make giant leaps.
What are the things that are in your circle of control? What are the things you can directly influence and change? If your life has been turned upside down by external factors, this focus might help you feel a bit more in control.
Break it down. If you have a goal that now seems too big, can you break it down into a quarter goal? Smaller numbers or tasks feel more achievable, and they all move you towards your bigger end goal.
Add in fun! Plan your holidays first before thinking about anything else. If you have no plans for a holiday or a break on your calendar in the next six months, add one now! What small or big activities might you be able to plan to look forward to? When you allow yourself a true break, you often get massive breakthroughs and a-ha moments in your life.
Here’s to a productive and purposeful second half of the year.