With my clients and my own business, I work hard to intentionally create a rhythm to the year that incorporates the key elements of prep, push, and replenish. Just like the intentional rhythm that my members experience in the Full Focus Entrepreneur membership, this rhythm is designed to prevent the pitfalls that we all fall into when we let our time go without the guidance of intentional design and planning. Right now my clients are getting ready for our mid-year goal check-in. We do a goal review at the end of each quarter, but the halfway point of the year is particularly important. I created these intentional check-ins because I know (first hand) that a year left to its own devices can be really ineffective, disheartening, and, honestly, not enjoyable. So without further ado, may I present the shape of a shitty year.
January dawns with clear bright enthusiasm, lots of resolutions, and very little resolve. January is heavy with hopes and dreams and light on plans and action. We stumble out of the previous year plumper and with lost momentum and yet we set our sights high with very little in place to reach it. January becomes either procrastination via preparation month or a month of uncoordinated action a full-court press on half-baked ideas.
February we actually start our year. The dreams that filled our heads in January become concrete goals in February (albeit smaller goals less buoyed by the optimism of a fresh year).
March we lose any momentum that the beginning of the year might have given us. The dreary weather, the lack of progress, and the bigness (or smallness) of what you want to accomplish start to drag us down.
Somewhere in April we get a second little burst of energy as we start the second quarter (accompanied by the panic of having made very little progress in Q1. Where does quarter one go!?) A touch of sunshine or the hope that someday spring may arrive starts to shake us up.
Just in time for May when full-on spring fever either energizes us or encourages us to shirk our duties in favor of sunbathing. May is a time where money is spent and money is made. Our goals galvanize us to action and we get some stuff done or we start on our tan.
June then comes crashing in with two major disruptors. SUMMER is officially here; school is out and regardless of if that means actual kids running around your lawn, that school is out feeling continues to effect us. The second disruptor happens as June turns to July and the Second Quarter waves its hands goodbye. THE YEAR IS HALF OVER?! The dreams left unstarted and the goals you aren't anywhere NEAR halfway to completing, pop up their ugly heads. That or you've totally forgotten about whatever you said you were going to accomplish back in January.
July brings with it that vacation you had planned way back before you realized how woefully behind you are on the goals you SWORE you were going to finally complete this year. Regardless of if your goals were on your mind, fun in the sun, family obligations, and general goal denial will push them out of your head for the month of July. You'll get to them this fall.
Speaking of which, August is filled with the stifling heat of late summer. For the parents, this is when school revs back up and consumes your time and attention. For the rest of us, the heat and the weight of all we need to accomplish this fall leaves us lethargic.
Now September, we gotta give September credit. September is one of those months that almost always pulls its weight. We get shit done in September, not necessarily goal work (since some of those goals are long forgotten by now) but we get things done nonetheless. September is prime time for new projects, goals, and making progress. Now quite often that energy is spent unwisely on passion projects and bright shiny objects that are not in line with our goals but are awful tempting. Maybe it’s vestigial from our school days, but September is the second beginning of the year. You don't even notice that the third quarter is over.
October follows suit, the weather starts to cool and our energy from September gets channeled into projects and productivity. No wonder the fall is becoming everyone's favorite season. We are renewed by the chilling out of the weather and the transition of seasons lends itself to transitions in our lives. Notably, the fall generally brings a shift in our goals, this is when we renegotiate what our goals for the rest of the year are. We may abandon for real our original goals for the year and replace them with smaller or completely different priorities.
By November, our eyes are forward. We look to the upcoming holidays and forward to the next year. In a great year that shift is warranted, we are well on our way to a solid finish by then anyway and we know the value of preparing for next year in advance. However, in a shitty year that shift to the future is the last bit of giving up on the present year and its now fully atrophied dreams.
December is consumed by the holidays with a poorly planned and ultimately futile last-ditch effort to make some more money, ya know to pay for holiday spending. Most importantly, the December of a shitty year does nothing to prime the pump or lay the groundwork for next year. You enter January with nothing in the pipeline and no momentum.
The shape of a shitty year is based in massive fluctuations in motivation and commitment to goals. When we don't intentionally create a rhythm and plan for how our year will play out, we leave ourselves vulnerable to any and every external influence. Our progress on our goals is literally effected by something as simple as the weather. Our dreams are wrung out by lack of progress until we abandon them out of shame or carry that shame with us. The months each come with their own excuses, "I'll get to work on my goals when it stops being so cold and rainy" "It’s so nice now I should enjoy it while it lasts" "Things are crazy with the kids home, I'll start on that as soon as the summer is over" "The holidays are coming, I need to focus on family and can't work on my dreams".
By contrast, a year of profit, intention, and balance is characterized by entering prepared with a plan for how you will incorporate the planning, push, and replenishment cycles in each area of your business. Your focuses for each quarter and the tasks and milestones that move you inexorably towards your goals are mapped out across the year so that you have sustainable growth, and your breaks are intentional instead of incidental. You have a rhythm which allows you to connect with your purpose and the why behind each of your goals. Your business is, therefore, able to nourish you and you can feed your business the balanced diet of routine action and sustained intention that it needs.
A shitty year can happen to anyone, but turning it around can also happen at any point. We are right smack in the middle of our year now. I invite you to reach out to me or schedule a call to talk about how we can get you back on track for the rest of the year. Don’t kid yourself that you’ll get down to business this fall (especially because I’m closing my doors to new clients starting August 1). If you are serious about making real strides in 2021, now is the time to act, before you blink and it’s nearly 2022.