You may have made New Year’s resolutions late last year and intended to make 2022 ‘your year.’ You had the best intentions, but after a couple of months, the drive faded away, and you may have forgotten what exactly you were working towards. You know that you should check in on your personal and financial plans, but you may dread the time and energy it takes to get back on track.
We just recently passed the halfway mark of 2022, and now is a great time to check in on where things stand with your financial and personal goals and to find the motivation to keep making progress, however slow.
Rich & REGULAR with Kiersten and Julien Saunders is no longer releasing new episodes on the SUCCESS Podcast Network, but you can still listen to the full conversation below.
Listen to this week’s episode of the rich & REGULAR podcast as we talk about the things you should include in your financial mid-year review, and keep reading for some ways to conduct a personal mid-year review to help you get back on track for the rest of the year.
Review your accomplishments
Start your check-in by reviewing everything you’ve accomplished in the last six months. Time flies when you’re busy with work, family and life, and it can be hard to remember everything that happened in the first part of the year.
Spend time with your calendar, email and journal, and create a list of everything you’re proud of. You may have made progress on paying off debt, increasing your investment accounts, losing weight or progressing on your side hustle. Make sure you spend a little time checking in and patting yourself on the back for everything you’ve accomplished.
Complete a brain dump
Once you’ve listed all your accomplishments, start a list of the next things you’d like to tackle. Keeping a list of all the little things that need to be handled can help you make space in your brain to be more present and help you see patterns and groups of functions that can be accomplished together.
When you have a list, group your items by category, and schedule a time to handle each group. Some things, like making appointments, can be done on your lunch break or during a quiet morning.
Other tasks may be more involved and require more time on the calendar, like reorganizing your office or filing systems or having a brainstorming session for a side hustle. Schedule an appointment with yourself, including requesting time off work if needed so that you can knock out a large portion of the task without interruptions.
Review your resolutions and goals
Once you have everything on the calendar booked, look over your original resolution list to see if what you were thinking about in January aligns with your current values and objectives. It’s okay to make changes as your life evolves, but it’s important not to let inertia take over. Now is a great time to start if you haven’t begun one of your intentions (and still want to work on it).
You may have had your priorities shift due to a new baby, new job, or other life event and need to reevaluate your objectives. Let go of ideas that don’t align with your values anymore, but don’t just cross items off the list because they seem too hard at the moment. You may need to shelve an idea until the timing is better, but try to make consistent, small progress on what’s important to you so that life doesn’t passively pass by in a blur.
Set your goals for the next six months
Make a list of the things you want to continue making progress on and the new things you want to add, and then spend some time breaking them down into manageable steps. Like the brain dump above, sort the actions you need to take by group and add some check-in appointments to your calendar to keep your momentum going.
It’s probably a good idea to limit yourself to just one or two complicated or time-consuming goals so that you can devote most of your time to making them a reality. Remember, the end of the year is only six months away, so you’ll have the opportunity to check in again and reevaluate.
Review your systems
As you review your wants and needs for the next six months, spend a little time reviewing the systems you use to get things done. Do you need to find a better way to deal with all the paperwork in your life? Or do you let little things pile up until they become overwhelming?
Developing a system to deal with the things that slow you down can help you accomplish more by keeping things organized and creating more space in your brain. If you feel like you’re always behind, think about the things that get away from you and add steps to your processing system to help you manage them.
A note about rest
You may have accomplished much in the year’s first six months, which is excellent. You crossed a lot off your list, but you may find that there’s always something to take its place. While being an adult seems to mean a never-ending to-do list, it’s also important to take time to rest.
If you’ve been feeling down, overwhelmed or just plain tired this summer, see if there’s a place in your goal-setting for more rest.
Maybe you set huge tasks to accomplish before the end of the year, and you exhausted yourself trying to get to the halfway point. Instead of just pushing through and bearing it for the next six months, find the time to relax for a while and pick up where you left off when you’re refreshed.
Final thoughts
A mid-year check-in can be helpful for various things, from financials to personal goals. Make sure you’re taking time to pick your head up from the day-to-day grind and look around at all you have accomplished and where you want to go. Spending a little time reflecting and planning can significantly affect how long it takes to get somewhere and where you finally end up.
