Resting into 2025

Alison Randle • 18 December 2024

And getting the new year off to a calm start

It’s the end of the year already! Have you forgotten about the half month reality of December? Are some of your grand plans still dreams? Can you find any peace with that? How are you? How are you really? However you are, that’s a real fact worth noticing. Using the information to inform your next actions will help you set up the next few weeks and months.

December is a great lens to be making choices through. We’re often at our most bedraggled, especially if at that life stage which involves sudden emergency costume making and cake baking for school. That aside, many of us will be feeling the habitual end of term, end of year rush requirement to get everything done by Christmas close of play. I don’t think it needs to be this way. I believe we can all work well whatever the prevailing conditions.

But we’re in midwinter, nearly at the longest night. As cyclic creatures, we are not designed to be rushing about in midwinter. This is the time of year for energy conservation, topping up with rich food and preparing for the coming cold months before the warmth and fresh energy of spring. It’s also the time to be gathering with favourite people, connecting and telling stories around the fire. We are designed to come inwards in mid winter. As I wrote in my ‘Summering’ article, seasons and cycles run through everything. The year, obviously, but also work projects and periods of intense progress have their beginning, middle and end, followed by rest. There’s a spaciousness just beyond the end of something, a gap and a pause before the next thing comes rushing in with its optimistic fresh spring green beginnings.

There are subtleties to the period before an ending too. Things are less intense. There is less passion to drive action. A late great friend of mine used to say that one of the greatest skills we must learn is ‘to leave well’. A well paced project or period of work has a natural U-curve, where the closing period is gentle. Let’s consider the autumn ‘term’. It began with the back to school feeling in late August and early September, and gradually picked up pace as the nights drew in and the remaining weeks and months of the year evaporated. Late October and November were fast. And now it is nearly Christmas! Even those of us with badly paced work projects (yes, me too) are currently experiencing the final, shallower parts of the U-curve – it is just not possible to be going at the sort of pace we were experiencing just a few weeks ago. Spoiler alert… some things need to be let go of.

So how are you now, and how do you want to be this time next year?

Now is the time to really notice how you are. Find time to be with yourself so you can do some good quality noticing. As well as noticing how you are, what do you want? Notice any difference between the two. And what can you do to change the picture? That last question may take a while to ponder. I often find that a question like this brings some quick answers, but over time more fundamental responses will come, bubbling up from my subconscious bringing a sudden realisation that is so simple and obvious it’s remarkable that I hadn’t previously clocked it. Sometimes they bring memories of the previous time I had the realisation but hadn’t integrated it into life before it faded and fell back into the subconscious.

The best way to make change is to increase awareness so that you can make different choices

Now is a great time to begin to plan next year, but don’t start with the big business or income goals! You can layer those in later – doing them first is a form of soufflé planning, the stuff of fluffy dreams that can never come true.

Let’s begin with the pattern or rhythm to your year. Where are your U-curves of activity and rest?

Where will you be socialising, playing and holidaying? And what about your business activities, do they match your annual rhythm? If not, now is the time to get serious about your life. Can your relationships and your health continue to support you being out of step with your natural rhythm? I have a cautionary tale about taking five months to recover from pneumonia. Pneumonia, an illness of old people right? I was in my forties and super busy ignoring my body. Don’t be like me. Seriously.

In business there are times for planning and times for doing

If you are going to be truly sustainable in your work, there is no choice but to work with your natural cycles, rhythms as well as your natural strengths and talents. Doing in midwinter is not a good way of working because it is inherently unnatural. Instead, rest in the pause. Gently sort things out, clear down the scatterings that fell out of the previous busy work periods. Connect with people who matter. This is the time to be building your capacity by resting and connecting.

We naturally begin to turn towards more activity as Twixtmas rolls by, that time where days and dates are interchangeable and confusing. Instead of ‘hitting the ground running’ on the 2^nd of January, keep going with the gentle activity.

Lean back into the questions of how you want things to be by the week before Christmas next year.

What is different? And what needs to become different now in order to make things sustainably different next December?

What steps must happen during the year? When?

What about client commitments? Ours are triple aspect businesses: client work, work on the business and the work of the business. How will all of that happen?

Now, what is possible in the timeframe? What needs to take longer? What will you delegate or outsource? What needs to be let go of?

And how will you be taking care of your most valuable business asset (you) in amongst all of this?

Planning is iterative

In my many years of working with not-for-profit organisations, I saw many a smart strategic plan, sitting on a shelf, neatly bound and looking all glossy and pretty after a consultant-facilitated Board Away Day. Such plans are never touched.

The very best plans are dog eared, coffee stained, and ever evolving

The vision is strong, but the steps between here and there might change as more detail is understood. It is only once the details become clearer that tools like spreadsheets, Gantt charts and Trello can be effectively utilised. Used too early and it’s just another form of soufflé planning and fluffy dreaming. Spending time tinkering with these tools is not a real step towards attaining the goals. It’s just exhausting yourself at your desk. You would be better having an actual break, going for a walk, doing a sudoku or watching a bit of trashy telly with a nice cup of tea. Yes, trashy TV is definitely better for you than doing pointless pseudoadmin at your desk. Don’t you have enough business admin to do without inventing pretend admin?

Talking of trashy TV and other gentle activities, Twelfth Night is a great time to begin to intentionally pick up the pace again. Revisit the embryonic plans and get even more detailed about what business activities will be happening, when and what resources will be required, then get increasingly sharp about January and part of February, and even sharper about next week.

And that’s the way to roll through the rest of the year, checking in with your purpose, vision and the general plan. What to do next is then simply obvious.

All is left is for you to DO it; one 45 minute work session at a time

This, my friend, is how wild dreams are manifested and woven into reality. The actual magic is in the doing, one step at a time.

You can use this methodology at any point in the year: holidays, summer breaks, long weekend, on a walk. The scale and context might differ, but the principles will apply. As a purpose-inspired, changemaking person, you decide!

Wishing you well in 2025

_______

Would you like some support with any of your planning or doing in 2025?

Click the links below to explore and drop me a line at hello@smartprospects.co.uk if you want to talk about how I can help you.