Completing 2022 and Moving On to 2023

As we move towards the end of another year full of challenges and growth, successes and failures, many of us are looking for ways to bring closure to the year and recharge for the new year. Depending on your role, a clean break from work may not be possible (if this it true for you, we highly recommend working toward reclaiming rest!). Even if you are able to take a full break, preparing for time off can bring stress, long hours, and a pile of incomplete items that hang over your head like the sword of Damocles.

It’s easy to keep such incomplete items as mental notes, hidden from the rest of your team, but doing so simply adds more stress to you, all while building isolation from your team.

So how can you and your team complete your 2022 well, while building authentic community?

This Week’s Tips:

Work on completing 2022 and setting yourself up well for 2023:

1. Take some time to reflect on and write down your individual and/or team accomplishments and challenges during 2022, which are more numerous than you may realize.
2. Now write a new list of “incompletions” – action items that are ongoing or stalled. Write notes on action items that can be taken on these incompletions in the coming week and set aside time for this on your calendar, and/or schedule a specific time to take action on these in the first half of January. Be honest with these incompletions; we all have limited resources – time, energy, focus, money, attention… So if these are projects that need to be let go, write that down!
3. Reflect on what “wondering” questions are on your mind right now and write down your top three. These would be open-ended questions that you may want to let percolate in the coming weeks, and that you may dive into deeper over the next few months.
4. Ask (or encourage) your team members to do the same with all three categories: Accomplishments, Challenges, and Incompletions.
5. Set aside time for everyone to share – in a meeting if possible, but asynchronously if not. Take some time to listen to celebrate each person’s accomplishments, honor their challenges, and acknowledge their incompletions. For those items that need to be let go, symbolize that in some way – for example, the person sharing can write that item on a piece of paper and then put it in a recycle bin while on camera.
6. Don’t start anything new! If there are new project ideas, mark time on your calendar in early January to start developing them. Make note of the idea to date in as much detail as you can so it lives somewhere outside your head.

These tips aim to build community and identify natural boundaries to make space for self-care. Try them out this week, and let us know how it goes in our Facebook group! We’d love to hear from you. As always, you can subscribe to our feed here, or sign up for our weekly newsletter to get these articles directly in your inbox.