So, I was planning to take only one month off for my birthday before getting back into the swing of blogging. Due to the amount of fun I was having for that one month (shout out to Aruba for an amazing time!), I decided to do a little more travel than I originally plan and extended the furlough to two months just to re-energize and wipe some items off the bucket list that I had been putting on hold for the past three years. With that being said, this turned out to be very fortuitous because, while I didn't do any blogging during those two months, I did do a lot of reflection. It allowed me to just take stock of how the first half of my year went and then put a plan in place to improve the areas that I may have slipped in so far. This also afforded me the opportunity to congratulate myself on the areas that I held steady in and was successful. Now, I'm back, more dedicated than ever, and excited about a lot of the ideas I was able to generate during that mid-year review. Therefore, I wanted to take a second with my first blog of the the 2nd half of the year to encourage everyone to start doing a mid-year review each year to help increase the chances of hitting their goals for the year. There are several clear reasons this is beneficial:
I.Why wait until the end of the year?
As we all know, procrastination is the cause of so many individual's failures in life. For that reason, I have never been a big fan of waiting until the end of the year to take stock in one's performance with any endeavor. For many of us, we may have completely forgotten some of the ideas that we committed to on January 1st, and if we don't take a minute to remind ourselves, these things will be completely lost in the day to day hustle of life. By doing a mid-year review, you give yourself the opportunity to do a quick "gut-check" on how faithful you have been to the ideas you focused on earlier in the year. If you've done a good job, now would be a great time to celebrate this commitment and pat yourself on the back. Small victories and congratulations to ourselves are those little things that can typically keep us motivated when times may get hard. If you haven't done a good job and notice several things that you may have slipped on, now would be a great time to rededicate yourself to the task at hand.
II. It gives you the opportunity to check your progress and adjust accordingly
Often, when we are excited about all the amazing things we are going to do at the beginning of the year, we sometimes over-commit ourselves to various endeavors that may not be realistic in light of different circumstances in our lives. Life is very unpredictable and your situation at January 1 may be drastically different from your current situation. Therefore, the act of semi-annual evaluation of your yearly goals make sense because you may need to adjust them accordingly to make sure they are Attainable and Relevant (two of the important aspects of
SMART goals) to your current situations. If they are not A and R, instead of continuing to shoot for something that may not make the most sense for your current situation, why not adjust accordingly to still give yourself a sense of accomplishment for the end of the year? When Tiger Woods has a bad first round (which he seems to have a lot of lately), he knows that it is unrealistic (or at least a stretch) for him to win the tournament, so he adjusts and creates smaller goals for himself, i.e. making the cut, shooting under par, or having a bogey-free round. By doing this, you give yourself something to shoot for that will keep you motivated. On the flip side, if you have completely dominated your goals for the year so far, it may give you a chance to adjust them to be greater than what you originally expected. You may have only thought you were capable of achieving employee of the quarter at the beginning of the year but, after winning it two quarters in a row, you now realize you have a shot at employee of the year if you keep up your activity. Why not go for it, by adjusting your behaviors and commitment to reach that goal.
III. Iterative analysis is the tool of the successful
Many people don't take the to time to truly analyze if what they are doing is helping or hurting them in the long run. Often, when they commit to an idea and create several approaches to solve the problem, they go forward full steam ahead, not taking a minute to evaluate if what they are doing is actually working. By performing a mid-year review, you are putting yourself in the minority - the minority of people who take time to evaluate the success of their ideas so far and take a different track if necessary. Sometimes, you don't need to change your ideas, as much as you need to implement different strategies and approaches to achieve your ideas. By doing a mid-year review, you give yourself the opportunity to make these adjustments accordingly to greatly increase your chances of success. To truly take it a step further, those who are successful often analyze more frequently than this, from monthly, to weekly, to even daily. The faster you identify a mistake, the faster you have the chance to fix it and put yourself on the right side of success.
Mid-year reviews. At work, some of us have been conditioned to hate mid-year reviews because we see them typically as a "here's what you've done wrong so far this year" session. However, if we take a little bit of a different view of this situation, we would understand they are really "here's how you can make your year better than it already is" dialogue. By doing this ourselves on where we stand in life and not only work, we greatly increase our ability to be successful in all facets of our world, not just in the place in which we are paid...which is still very important, BTW. ;-)
Ken Middleton is an Account Manager at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and MBA graduate of Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech. You can follow his daily quotes of inspiration and motivation on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIN.
This is a personal blog post. Statements, views and opinions expressed via LinkedIn and other platforms do not necessarily represent the perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes of TEKsystems. TEKsystems specifically disclaims any responsibility or liability for any losses or damages of any kind suffered by a user resulting from postings or links on social media platforms, including, but not limited to, losses or damages resulting from fraud, misstatements and misunderstandings. TEKsystems does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness or completeness of the information contained or linked.
No comments:
Post a Comment