It’s the home stretch of 2017. One of my favorite times of the year is to sit down and start prepping for the following year (see here and here). For whatever reason, the last 60 days of the year tend to go by in a blur for me. Sitting down and preparing for the following year allows me to slow down for a bit.
In addition to doing the things I’ve done in previous years (see here and here), the lessons I learned this year also changed the way I prep for the upcoming year.
Creating Theme for 2018
The theme for 2018 is the result of a moment of fed-up-ness (not an actual word, but rock with me anyway). It’s the perfect follow-up to this year’s theme of Stay Ready. It’s one of those things that I’ve struggled with for a while now. The theme alone has me super excited for the upcoming year.
Batching Tasks
Multitasking has been a nightmare this year. When I’m not at work, I work on a blog post while doing another blog-related task at the same time. What ends up happening is that I don’t finish either of those tasks that day and carry them over to the next day. This is a horrible use of time.
Batching my tasks would be a good use of time management plus it would help me focus on one thing at a time which would make sure that I finish my tasks in a timely fashion. I can choose specific days for blog post writing, blog maintenance, etc. Hopefully, this will eliminate the bouts of burnout I experienced this year.
Planning Differently
For the past few years, I write all of my goals for the year and that’s it. I’ve ended the year not accomplishing a quarter of the goals I made. This year, I’m being more flexible with my planning by breaking my goals down into quarters. This makes things a lot less overwhelming and I’ll be more likely to actually accomplish my goals. Plus I can focus on each goal versus all of my goals as a whole.
Taking the time the prepare for 2018 by doing these things will alleviate a lot of anxiety, burnout, and overwhelm. I look forward to whatever 2018 brings my way.
I got this.
