Happy 2020, everyone! We hope your holiday season was filled with love, laughter and some relaxing time away from your desk. Today really kicks off the first full work-week of year and everyone is (kind of!) ready to put their nose to the grindstone and dive back in. One of the first and incredibly tempting things to do is to dive straight into your fresh, beautiful and untampered with planner but, please resist the urge. Before you dive in to scheduling every aspect of your waking life, I would strongly advise you to do a little more reflecting now that 2019 is fully over and we are past the craziness of the holiday season. Let’s make the most of any time you spend ‘planning’ in 2020 so that you can avoid the dreaded hamster-wheel of ‘busy-ness’.
If you have a journal, great let’s use that. If you don’t, you can even draft an email to yourself that you can save in a special folder for later reflection. Try this instead:
First, start off by outlining any outstanding work from 2019 that you haven’t finished yet. Did you plan for the work to go into 2020 or were there schedule delays? What can you do to prioritize wrapping up that work? Don’t rush through these, but let’s figure out how to truly get 2020 on a fresh, clean slate!
Secondly, spend a few minutes reflecting on 2019. Think about all of the projects and the previous goals you set out for yourself throughout last year. Jot down 3 things in 2019 that you did incredibly well with your business. What were you most proud of? Why?
Lastly, think about the full year of projects, client relationships, business growth tactics for yourself. What areas would you like to do a little better in 2020? Jot down 3 things that you know you could’ve done a little better in 2019.
Now, we can start to dig into the planning.
For anything outstanding from 2019 — what blocked you from wrapping up by EOY? What can you do to prevent that from happening again this year? What actions do you need to take to wrap up that work? Are your actions dependent on anything (from your clients, vendors, etc.)? How quickly can you get to work on wrapping that up? Create a project plan and hold yourself accountable to getting this done!
For the 3 things you did well in 2019 — why do you think these went so well? Do you enjoy these tasks more than others? What can you do to continue and/or do more of these activities in 2020?
For the 3 areas you know you could’ve done better in 2019 — why do you think these things did not go so well? Do you enjoy doing these activities? If not, are these tasks that you could either delegate or outsource? Streamlining those activities that you want to do will help you be more efficient, productive — and consistent because you’ll actually get joy out of those tasks. If those areas didn’t go well in 2019 for other reasons, can you do a risk mitigation plan to ensure they don’t happen again?
Taking time to reflect on things you’ve done well, areas you can improve and any known productivity issues will truly help you gain more awareness of your own habits. When you have some awareness about your own tendencies, you can consciously plan how to mitigate any of those challenges and focus on areas you excel in for the new year. Share some of your answers below in the comments!
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