A Plan to Focus Your Closing Wins of the Year

By Christine Carron

With the end of the year fast approaching, you may be feeling an increased intensity to get as many of your creative goals for this year done as you can. In addition, you probably have holiday activities and commitments either to pull off or simply participate in. Hopefully, all of those holiday experiences are designed for joy and fun, yet the reality is they also take time, energy, and focus. 

If that weren’t enough, you may be thinking about your creative goals for next year and also blocking time to reflect on this year’s accomplishments, challenges, and learnings, so you can enter next year with a thoughtful, grounded, and inspiring plan that will launch you into new heights of creative productivity. 

All of the above are just broad sweep end-of-year factors that could already be sending your energy into chaotic loop-de-loops. Who knows what other you-specific factors you’re also juggling right now. So let’s just call it: the end of the year can be intense.

That means that right now (and I mean like today) is a great time to use Goodjelly’s three core resolutions—Smart Process, Grounded Power, and Inner Kindness—to regroup and focus the final weeks of the year in a way that creates a sense of spaciousness, confidence and calm.

The Plan

The purpose of a regroup like this is about dealing with reality without going into self-criticism if it turns out you won't be able to get everything done before the year ends. As a result, the resolution of Grounded Power has a starring role in this plan.

• Grounded Power: Make the decision that you will give yourself the gift of slowing down to assess where you are and what you realistically can get done between now and the end of the year. 
• Smart Process: Make a list of all the things you still want to get done this year. Group them by high-level categories, which will make it easier for your brain to get a handle on what you are dealing with.
• Grounded Power: Prioritize your list. First group the activities by High, Medium, and Low priority. Note: Challenge yourself to ensure that at least 30% of your tasks are marked as medium priority and at least 30% are marked as low priority. Remind yourself, if needed, that each task's prioritization assessment is a distinction you are making about a task relative to the other tasks on your list. Perhaps you really do have a list that is full of 100% legit high priority items, but if in a place of calm you can create clear-eyed distinctions of "this over that" now, it absolutely will help you keep your equilibrium if (when) a time crunch happens. 
• Inner Kindness: Do a second prioritization pass, this time from an Inner Kindness perspective, asking yourself, What needs to move lower on the prioritization list in order for me to 1/ reach the end of the year without tipping into resentment and/or exhaustion, 2/ be fully present in whatever tasks or activities I do prioritize; and 3/ experience a more delight-filled end of the year?
• Grounded Power: Take the action or actions necessary to set/reset expectations with others and with yourself (including your Inner Critic, Inner Pusher, and Inner Perfectionist) in regard to what you will be able to get done in the remaining weeks of the year. 

Focus for Connection

When you use a plan like this to slow down, get clarity, identify your priorities, and set expectations, you will add a wonderful sense of spaciousness into your end of year activities. That makes room for you to create deeper connections with the work you have prioritized , as well as deeper connections with yourself and with those you love. Now, that’s some Goodjelly!

Happy day, happy creating, happy jamming—you’ve got this!