And just like that, it’s already the end of March! Give yourself a few minutes to reflect on the year you had envisioned, and the year so far. What can you see?
Here are some questions I’m asking myself as we close out the first quarter of the year – perhaps they may be helpful for you too:
Projects
What key projects were you planning to tackle this year? Are you where you thought you would be with them by now? Have you even started?
For instance, a couple of years ago I enrolled in a three month ‘Introduction to Spanish’ intensive at the local University. I’d taken the intensive approach to learning other things in the past, with good results. However, at the end of the three months, I had learnt two things. Firstly, that I do not have a natural ear for languages, and secondly, that in my case, learning a language was going to have to be a case of slow and steady, not fast and furious.
So, after having zero margin in 2016 to restart my Spanish-language journey, I’ve decided to tackle it again this year. Yet I find myself now one-quarter through the year and not where I had planned to be on that project. I need to take a new approach if I want to make better progress as we go into quarter 2.
What projects have you been planning to tackle this year? Are they on track, or do you need to tweak your approach?
Priorities
As you considered the year ahead back during Christmas and the New Year, what key areas did you want to prioritise more in 2017? Perhaps it was your health, or your marriage. Perhaps it was that side hustle, or your spirituality.
At this milestone in the road of 2017, have you already been making the shifts necessary to elevate that key priority in the way you spend your time, energy, attention or finances? If not, what needs to change in order for that to become a reality?
One key area I decided to prioritise for 2017 is relationships, and I’m fairly happy with how this is going so far. In decisions big and small, I am trying to train myself to reset the defaults in how I choose to orient myself, and to place greater value on investing myself into relationships, even when time feels pressed and tasks beckon.
What are your key priorities for the year? Are you noticing the changes that tell you you are successfully placing them higher in your behaviour and decisions?
Wellness
How is your wellness compared to the start of the year? Are you trending up or down in the key aspects of a healthy life?
Do you have more or less margin?
Are your relationships closer or more distant?
Are you fuelling your body with more or less of the nutrients it needs to thrive?
Are you getting more or less sleep than you need?
Are you moving more or less?
Are you more or less financially stressed?
Gaps
And finally… where are you dropping the ball? What should be happening, that just really isn’t? What commitments (whether to yourself or others) are you not really meeting?
Do you need to re-evaluate what you are able to be committed to and take it off your plate altogether? Do you need to change the planning, the timelines or the priorities? Do you need to drop something else instead to give yourself more bandwidth? Do you need to enlist other people?
Rather than simply continuing to drag around the mental weight of something you’re consistently not getting to, how can you reassess the landscape and come up with a plan that’s working for you?