How To Close 2024 With Purpose
I appreciate the rhythm of the seasons. Despite the fact that climate change is increasingly blurring the expected lines (why was I at the beach and swimming in the ocean at Thanksgiving?), we are all subject to the same calendar and the unstoppable march towards the calendar flip to 2025. As of today’s date of writing, I have a handful of working days until the professional part of 2025 is in my rear view mirror. That’s equal parts intoxicating and terrifying. So little time to finish some important work, and yet such anticipation for the pause and rest that’s coming soon.
In recent weeks, coaching conversations have naturally veered towards end-of-year as the target. Once we collectively get over the shock of the pace of 2024 and how relentlessly it charged towards its conclusion, we often spend some time thinking about how the past year unfolded, and what it brought in terms of surprises, delights and challenges. And with the healthy tension of time, we talk about important conversations, undone work, and other things that can make 2024 end with a positive tone and flavour.
I’ve done some amazing year-end planning models and tools in the past. The Find Yourself, Free Yourself, Fire Yourself workbook that my colleague Lance Odegard crafted last year was amazing. It was the deep work I needed last year.
I’m a big fan of thoughtful and thorough year-end planning and future-casting to the following year. And at the same time, I believe you need to be honest about the energy you have in the tank and what imperative/urgency you might be feeling to reflect, plot and plan the next 12 months.
For this year, I’m going to be lightening the load for myself. So I’m sharing an easy lift to set you up for some thoughtful and achievable reflection and forward thought for the last few pages of 2024.
Have a Quick Conversation With 2024
Spending some time going over your notes, calendar and most durable post-it notes from the past year can reap some good rewards. Knowing where you spent your time and what juice you got from the various squeezes is usually a productive experience.
But the most powerful reflection comes not through data or dates; it comes through curious questions. Pausing for that moment to have a conversation with yourself that makes a little space to think and reflect. This is an easy-button way to think about the year that was.
Here’s five simple questions to spark your convo with 2024:
If 2024 was a t-shirt, what would it say on the front?
What’s the one professional accomplishment from 2024 that you’ll remember, talk about and celebrate for years to come?
Which spaces/faces/places brought you the most consistent joy at work in 2024?
What was the best thing you started in 2024?
What was the most uncomfortable moment from 2024 that now you have the courage to revisit and learn from?
Do Some Relationship Cleanup
You’ll never get everything done in 2024 that you earnestly set out to accomplish many months ago. Us humans have an amazing capacity to overestimate our capacity and what’s achievable. As the eternally awesome Rich Roll said on a recent podcast, “human society is all gas and no brake.”
So it all won’t get done. But what can get done is making sure you start the year in a position of strength and clarity around your working relationships. Having any negative hangover from some unhealthy conflict, conversations that got personal or harmful, or places where emotions got a little spicy is no way to finish the year. You have raging agency to have a few conversations that really matter, and it won’t take long…a coffee or a 15-minute Zoom can solve a lot of relational challenges and ensure you’ve got your relational matrix stitched together nice and snug as you start 2025. All it takes is the courage to reach out to someone and offer the space to get to the other side of a past bad experience so you can have better experiences in the coming year.
Set Up Your New Habits For 2025
Here’s a somewhat counter-intuitive idea…don’t make any goals for 2025 yet. Seriously, just skip it for now. Instead, mark this as something to complete somewhere around late March or early April as the spring season starts to peek through at us.
Instead, plan your habits for 2025. Build from that more important and elemental base. Your habits are your goals in action. As the master of habits James Clear says, “every action is a vote for the person you wish to become.”
Start by writing down:
Three habits from 2024 that I will stop in 2025.
Three habits from 2024 that I will continue in 205.
Three habits I will start in 2025 that support the person I wish to become.
Give yourself 90 days to do that work. Once you’ve made those changes stick, then you have a killer base to articulate your goals and aspirations for the remaining nine months of the year.