A Mid-year Personal Reflection and Review

Mid-year reflection: The key to achieving your goals

Is it just me or does time pass too quickly? I am honestly shocked that we are already halfway through 2024. Life is rushing by with things to do and timelines to meet. How has your year been so far?

Do you feel like you’re on track for all the resolutions you laid out in January?

The end of June is the perfect time for a mid-year review!

A mid-year reflection allows you to become aware of what is working and what isn’t. It helps us recalibrate – allowing you to instead reprioritize the most important projects.

Its useful to think in three categories, in this order:

1. Things that have gone well.
   Writing up the year’s highlights is really refreshing, our minds tend to forget all of the small, progressive wins, but once you get started they’ll come flooding back.
   It might be your work projects, personal projects, time spent with friends, time spent with family, the photos you’ve taken, the books you’ve read, etc.

Don’t rush this stage.
By identifying the various sources of joy in your life, it becomes easier to plan how you’ll keep them up for the rest of the year.

2. Things that haven’t gone well.
   After all the wins, these don’t sting quite as much, and it can even feel like a relief to name the areas of your life that still require some attention.
   It might be the things you’ve put on hold, relationships that have deteriorated, struggles in your work, opportunities that passed you by, or whatever else is on your mind.

3. Things to do next.
   This should be a list that excites you.
   It can be made up of more activities that will spark joy, fixing the things you’ve neglected, and identifying some new opportunities that weren’t on your radar at the start of the year.

Here’s the key point: that third list needs to influence either one’s calendar or wallet. To genuinely improve the rest of the year, optimistic thoughts must translate into action. Now is the perfect time to start scheduling meetings, setting reminders on the phone, ordering necessary items online, and making the most of this newfound energy.

This is the difference between motivation and discipline.
Anyone can do things when motivated, whereas discipline is doing things when you don’t feel like it. Just as professionalism being “doing the work even when you don’t want to”.

Earlier this year you set goals and rode the wave of motivation for a few weeks.
Knowing what you know now, which goals could benefit from some fresh motivation?
Which require some discipline?
What steps can you take today that will increase the chances of forming good habits?

To get started, grab a notepad or the notes app on your phone, and write three headings:
Things that have gone well

Things that haven’t gone well

Things to do next