Focus on what’s important for a stress-free end to your year

It’s the first week of December and people are drowning in everything that needs to be done before the year ends. It’s a pattern we all fall into.

But what if this year it could be different for you and your team? Here are a few tips to help you get there.

Assess

Taking the time to assess where you are currently at is a worthy investment. Look at the tasks or goals you have set yourself and your team and assess how realistic they are. Are they are still important to achieve?

What are the sacred cows you are holding onto that need to be let go?

Have the conversation

I was told a story a few years ago by a client who was overworked and highly stressed. The straw that broke this executive was a report that was due every Friday and needed to be sent to the board by 5pm. On this particular day he decided that he could not physically do another task and left the report fully accepting that it could have been a career-ending move. 

How long do you think it took the board to enquire about the report? Three weeks for four out of seven board members to ask where it was. It turns out that they only skimmed certain parts of the report and found it difficult to read. This gave him the opportunity to have a conversation about what was required, to be able to streamline the process and create a document that was both useful and required less time commitment from him.

Once he took responsibility for managing his workload and stopped to assess the tasks he was doing ‘because that’s what we always do’ he was able to lessen the load, delegate to others where he could, alleviate some stress and gain valuable time in the process.  

Decide on what’s really important. How many tasks are you and your team involved in that are not important but you do them because you always have?

Goals

Set three tangible, realistic goals that you will feel good about achieving before the year ends. Map out what needs to happen to achieve these and obtain clarity on who is accountable for each task.

Celebrate

Set some time to celebrate your achievements as a team over the past year. Book something in now and name and acknowledge what you have achieved.

Pollyanna Lenkic is the founder of Perspectives Coaching, an Australian-based coaching and training company.