At first glance, it seems like a contradiction in terms. The end of the year is a particularly busy time for many people. Current projects have to be completed and new ones planned. Additional tasks are on the agenda, such as Christmas cards and Christmas newsletters to ensure that all customers, employees and business partners are taken care of, and then there are the Christmas presents ...
Where is the opportunity for mindfulness and reflection in the midst of this turbulence? This is exactly where it is worth taking a closer look and making room for these important topics. Put your to-do list to one side for 5 minutes, light an incense candle, make yourself a cup of coffee or tea and take a deep breath.
The approaching end of the year is, in many ways, a final year. Many tasks and projects have set themselves a deadline of December 31, the year is over and the new year is already in the starting blocks, with all its challenges. This time of year is like a small break that invites you to take a deep breath after a long run.
For many different reasons, it is important and sensible to use this break to pause and look back carefully on personal and professional successes, challenges and learning moments. This is the only way to gain important insights into what has already gone well and where it is worth making adjustments and doing better next year.
Finally, the Christmas season should always be an invitation to self-care. What is good for you, what are you looking forward to and what can help you to be less stressed next year?
Over the past year, you have acted according to certain convictions, upheld values and set yourself short and long-term goals. But have you ever asked yourself whether this still works for you or whether there are other goals and values that are important to you now? Self-reflection is important so that you stay on a course that can fulfill you both personally and professionally in the long term. Reflection involves two aspects: looking back on the past and looking ahead to the next year. Targeted questions can help you to gain clarity.
By taking a targeted look at the past, you can build on and strengthen the positive findings in the coming year and avoid negative ones. The following questions can give you ideas for your personal review of the year.
The second part of self-reflection is looking ahead to the next year. If you could paint yourself a world, what would it look like? And what could realistically be realized in the near future?
We learn throughout our lives from the experiences we have had. The British educationalist and Professor of Learning, Teaching and Quality Development at the University of Oxford Graham Gibbs has developed his own reflection model that you can use as a structured approach to end-of-year reflection.
This cycle consists of six phases that guide you to analyze your own experiences from the past year and to learn from them.
The Gibbs Reflection Cycle is a valuable tool to help you reflect on personal or professional experiences of the past year and take a step forward in your development.
In all the previous considerations, one theme always crystallizes: time. We would like to spend more evenings with friends, see dear relatives more often or spend more quality time on the things that are important to us. But in the end, there is always not enough time. That's why it's worth putting your finger in the wound and asking yourself: where in life is time lost? You probably know the old saying:
"We can't give life more hours, but we can give hours more life."
This wisdom can also be applied to work. With improved time management, you can make more time for the things that are most important to you, both personally and professionally. Last year, we already gave you some ideas for improved time management, which we would just like to present again briefly here.
The Pareto principle states that around 20 % of the tasks at hand can already yield 80 % of the success, or in other words: if you concentrate on essential tasks and either delete unimportant tasks or distribute them well among the team, you can work effectively and save time. A good resolution for next year could therefore be to distinguish even more clearly between important and less important tasks.
An important part of time management is not piling up tasks on your own desk, but assigning them to the right team members. In our article on the art of delegation, we give you valuable tips on how to choose the right tasks to delegate, find suitable employees and instruct them in the best possible way.
You probably know those days when there is hardly any time between meetings to refill your coffee cup. Many meetings are unproductive, drag on unnecessarily or are simply superfluous. Take a look at our magazine article "Time-wasting meetings" for helpful tips on how you can remove inefficient appointments from your calendar in the coming year.
There are still a few days left until the end of the year, which you can fill with more mindfulness and take time to look back. To help you enter the next year with lots of positive energy, clear goals and more time for all the essentials, we would like to give you three tips to encourage you in these plans.
Maybe it doesn't always have to be perfect
Many people with management responsibility tend towards perfection. They tweak a result until it finally meets their own high standards. However, a lot of time is lost on this final polish. Perhaps it is enough to do one or two tasks "well" or "very well" and achieve the same goal.
Your expectations and your goals count
Very often, stress and overload arise because we try to please others first and foremost and lose sight of our own personal goals in the process. Why don't you turn off all the emails and WhatsApp messages in which other people have expectations of you? Which of these really match your personal goals?
Free yourself from old baggage
What often slows us down are old bills - personal conflicts with people, unfinished tasks that have always been put off until the next month or decisions that we always carry around in front of us. The time until the end of the year offers you the opportunity to tidy up, release the brakes and really get going.
Our coaching team will be happy to support and accompany you in all your projects. We wish you, your team and your family a stress-free, mindful time until the end of the year and a motivating and energetic start to the coming year.