Mid-Year Review

1. Set the Tone: Welcome to your Mid-Year Review. I'm your host, Lisa Jacobs, and I am actually getting to review and reflect on this year with you. My favorite season is planning season, and that really consists of November, December, January. I'm probably still talking about it in February, but I get to reignite that passion somewhere mid summer when it's time to ask ourselves who's ready to make the most of the rest of the year. I know I Schramm this summer season is upon us and I'm feeling so curious about what you're choosing to do with yours, how you're choosing to spend your downtime. So please in the discussions are the comments. Leave me some information about how you're choosing to spend your summer with your business, your busy life, your career? Before I began annual planning for my business, I used to enter the summer season with the best intentions and so much excitement to be with my children after all being home with my children on sick days or summer breaks is why I went into business in the first place. However, my good intentions would quickly subside as I fell into a constant low grade panic about the slowness of the season. And that's still makes me sad because the slow moments make up the very best moments of our lives, just in case you need it. I'm sharing this reminder as we head into the Mid-Year Review, I'm sending you peaceful thoughts and joyful slowness and offering you some review and reflection prompts to help you make though most of the rest of your year ahead. To kick us off today, I will love to set Tone for our lesson time together. First of all, no matter when you find this, I hope you're soaking up the season that you're in right now. It may not be the middle of summer for you. It may not be exactly mid-year. But my goal for this session is to help you reflect on what is and what isn't working for you. Tame your to-do list, com your spirit, and relish in the slowness because you work hard and you deserve it. Let's begin with where you're at. In this lesson, we're going to look to the past, we're going to look to the future and we're going to get excited as we think ahead to where we're headed and what we want. One thing, I'm incorporating, the very best way to set the tone for a successful session is to start right here in the present moment. So before I even sit down, my sudden intention to be relax and enjoy this very part of my job that I love so much spending time with you. We're together. Now in this moment, you've come along way on your journey, and I've traveled my own distance to be here with you. And now we get to have this moment together. And I am so grateful to be in your presence. I'm grateful for the cool room that I'm sitting in. I'm grateful for all this equipment that allows us to connect digitally and virtually. I'm grateful that all as well in my world, I hope the same for you. How about you? What's comfortable for you in this moment? Settle into your skin. Let's be present with what we're doing here and why you joined me in the first place. So what's delightful around you who has been lighting up Your day so far. Let's have this moment of peace and surrender and get into the headspace of appreciation and gratitude. It's gonna go a long way for us during this session. To begin, you'll want to have your journal. You're going to want to have a day planner or whatever type of schedule or agenda you work out of. Each day. You're going to want to have a working copy of my book, your best year. If you don't have it yet, you're going to want to grab one. It's a great book. You're also going to want to have the accompanying workbook that I've included with this lesson, downloaded, maybe printed out in front of you. You're going to want to have some pen and paper handy. And I highly recommend a following up this session with some alone time and some quiet time, just you time. So now that we've settled in, Let's get started. 2. The Fresh Start Effect: Whether it's your Mid-Year, a new quarter, it could be Q3, it could be Q4, whatever break in the calendar is here for you right now. This is your opportunity to reset the pace and reconsider where you're at and where you're headed. Oftentimes in business, we set out with the best intentions and clearly defined goals. But in lieu of a landmark kept consistently front and center, will end up circling back into what I call the daily scramble. We're all susceptible to the daily scramble. It's a real threat. I'm gonna give you a lot of reminders about it today, but it will leave us lost in directionless if we don't put up some boundaries and some bumpers around it and catch ourselves when we fall off track. When you don't reach your goals, when you're not hitting your landmarks and your milestones. It's never for a lack of effort. I know this about you. I know how hard you're working and I know how challenging it is to put yourself out there and be as vulnerable as you are each day. And to put your ideas and Your Art and your thoughts and your messages out into the world. What I've come to realize is that for many of us, the daily scramble, an undefined growth, is a recipe for disaster. It gets us nowhere fast and worse, we arrive frantic and disheveled to the finish line, not even sure how we got there and we're not really happy with the condition that we're in. This leads me to the question that I have for you. Do you want to arrive anywhere frantic and disheveled? I don't think so. It makes me think of some of the trips I've traveled on in my life. I've been called to travel quite a bit this year. And sometimes I show up, calm and collected and prepared, well-groomed, and well-situated. I even put together a comfortable travel outfit and I just feel really good when I'm leaving from the airport. And I feel really good when I'm on my way home again. Other times I've been ill-prepared, showing up late, having no idea what I packed, if I even have the right clothes, I've left my home on my way to travel feeling unkempt, just completely frantic, disheveled, and not put together and not feeling well. So this analogy always reminds me of business operations and how am I showing up to deadlines? How are you showing up to deadlines? I've had some this year where I've shown up ahead of time, completely prepared, just absolutely enjoying myself once the launch or the product is rolling out. And then I've had others where I've been that frantic and disheveled version of myself. And you can show either way, frantic and disheveled or calm, cool, and collected. Which of these versions do you think is going to attract more business? I know for me, the calm, cool, collected version of myself always attracts more business, more friends, more everything good in my life. So the point is, there is a better way for us to show up. This is the perfect opportunity to reset the pace and regain a sense of preparedness and control of your calendar. If you're feeling frantic and disheveled, you come to the right place, we are going to pull that down and gets you back on track. And if you're feeling calm and cool and collected, well done, Good for you. I know we all love feeling that way. We're going to devise a plan that helps you stay feeling like that for the rest of the year. One thing I know for sure and continue to research is that we each follow our own creative rhythms. We have cycles and seasons. And if slowing down feels like the opposite of what you feel like doing right now, that's quite wonderful to I'm in summer. And so I'm trying to really relish and create a slow season for myself and move with my business. But you're slow season may be entirely different than mine. Regardless. Nature's changing of the season brings a fresh start and opportunity to reevaluate for us all. Summer can be as significant temporal landmark as the turning of a new year or your birthday. A temporal landmark is a psychological event based on a moment in time, typically marked by the calendar that helps structure our perception and use of time overall, temporal landmarks are often accompanied by what's called the Fresh Start Effect, a cognitive bias which allows us to leave our past selves mistakes behind, and begin with our new Self and a clean slate. An example would be how many people Start a new fitness routine on January 1st. So with the 2023 version of me didn't work out. I know that 2024 version of me well, and that's a great example of how we believe at a day on the calendar, we are going to change for the better. We are going to adopt our new ways and we're going to leave behind our mistakes from the book by Daniel H. Pink and I quote temporal landmarks, slower thinking, allowing us to deliberate on a higher level and make better decisions. If you'd like to make some changes to your operation, your approach, or your outlook if things aren't exactly how you'd like them to be right now. Well, now or tomorrow or next Monday is just a good start date to mark and circle on your calendar to begin as any other date that we see. The new year brings significant motivation and excitement for you. We can create a new year right here in the middle of the year. And that's just one of the things that we're going to work on together in this lesson, there is a better way to approach your goals and your business and your big picture visions. It's all based on three key ideas. Number one, we're going to decide the date that your next Fresh Start begins. To do that. We're gonna do an overview and Check-In of the big pictures and all we're going to cover here today. Then the next thing we're gonna do is review the year. So far, we're going to harvest the golden nuggets and we're gonna look for the things that have been working. We're going to climb up to the 30,000 foot view and we're gonna do some big picture visioning and reflection. And then we're going to talk about planning. And when we get to planning, we're going to organize the year ahead together. After all that is said and done, we will then cover productivity tips, tricks and hacks to help you maximize your time and energy this year 3. Step 1—Check-In: Let's just bring some awareness to where we're at right now before we begin dreaming off into the future or looking back in the past, Let's take a moment to honor how far we've come. The questions I have for you in this early section are, what speed or pace have you been going lately? What speed or pace are you at? I sometimes like in this two travelling along a busy roadway and let's say it's a four lane highway. You'll have a very slow pace. And that's a really comfortable than thinking of my summer. That's what I want. My suffered would be just enjoying the ride and being in that slowly. Then you have various lanes until you get to the fast lane. That's where a lot of action is happening. That's where you're passing cars and in its taking full focus because you're really in the action. And let's imagine that this four lane highway, we're allowed to go anywhere from pull off on the side of the road, 0 mph all the way up until 100 mph, really fast-paced, really high-energy. And you can think of times in your life where you been at any one of those stages, you've been somewhere in the middle. You've been somewhere toward the slower side of things. You've been somewhere towards the really, really too fast for you run your train off the tracks type of side of things. This is just The whole point of this exercise is to make us stop and consider we moving too fast? Are we moving too slow? What would be an ideal pace? And what's pace and speed are you at right now? And that's just for awareness purposes. We're not even going to do anything with that information right now. It's just something to consider. Then the next question I have for you is how is your energy? Are you feeling just drained into pleaded? Are you feeling vibrant and full of life? What is, if you are feeling vibrant and full of life, what's fueling that for you? And if you're feeling drained into pleaded, what are some of the things that you feel are really getting you down? What are some of the things that are making you really tired and making you feel like you just don't have the energy. In this class we're gonna be talking a lot about procrastination. Procrastination is an energy drain are like no other. And so if you're feeling alive and vibrant and full of energy, good for you. You're living in alignment right now and that's fantastic. But if you feeling drained into pleaded, I think you're probably going to uncover some Procrastination are some really hard things are some big challenges you're feeling overwhelmed by throughout this session. And for that, I have some triggers and tactics to overcome them. We have quite a class in front of us. Then. With that, we've talked about speed and we've talked about pace, and we've talked about energy. But do you need to pour some gasoline for do you need a cool your jets? Have you been traveling in white and tackling the wheel and going crazy? And is it time for you to slow down? Is it time for you to speed up or slow down or do you like exactly what page you're at? So for me personally in this year, especially, I've been very hot and cold. I have been traveling like barreling down the fast lane. And then the next thing I know, I'm in easily laying over here the slowly not doing anything. And so my year so far has been trying to find some moderation, trying to find the median speed that I want to travel and balance all of that out. As a reminder, we discussed and defined temporal landmarks in the last session. And these are dates on the calendar often accompanied by the Fresh Start Effect, cognitive bias, which allows us to leave our past selves mistake behind and begin with a clean slate. So now that we've checked in with Your energy, your pace, and where you're feeling and how you're feeling right now, you'd probably started to recognize some things you need most right now. We are going to use the temporal landmark to our advantage. And this is gonna be your very first action item. I want you to take a look at the calendar and decide the day when your next Fresh Start begins. Now, it could be any day on the calendar, but Fresh starts and temporal landmarks typically do well day after vacation, or Mondays or firsts of the month, your birthday, if it's coming up anytime soon. Sometimes people use their anniversary, but find a date that stands out to you as significant or something you really want to earmark as your next Fresh Start and just name it. That's all we're doing today. We're not doing anything hard today. All who are going to do is be together and really relax into this session. So go ahead and look at the calendar and decide if you want to make any changes throughout this mid-year review. What day will those changes begin? 4. Step 2—Review: Now it's time to review what's happens so far. We're going to look for things that have been working and things that haven't been working. We are going to start with question number one. And that is what feels good about the first half of the year where you're at in the year so far, what has been clicking for you? What have you found or discovered or studied that you really enjoyed doing or learning about? Where are you finding a new sense of alignment? What is feeling really good about the first half of the year? And then in our next question, we're asking what areas of your life and or business or feeling out-of-sync. What's not clicking for you? Where are you feeling? A little bit overwhelmed? Where are you feeling? Pressed or pressured? Where are you doing work that's entirely in your drudgery zone and just depleting you of all your energy. And with that, we're going to add the next question, which is, what do you want the rest of the year to feel like for you? What would you like to see take shape? What are some things that you would love to see come to fruition or some unfinished business that you would like to clear up or complete. But what do you want the rest of the year to feel like? And now that we know what we want the rest of the year to feel like, what will you need to do to make that feeling come true? What are some things that you're going to have to change? And what are some mindsets that you might have to shift around or limiting beliefs or hidden obstacles in your way that you might have to remove. But what you need to do yourself in your control to make those feelings come true for you for the rest of the year. And our final question in this series as, what would you like to stop doing? What's eating up your time and making you feel bad or not contributing to your best life in any way. What can we get rid of and remove it so the rest of the year goes much smoother. This might be something like overbooking yourself. This might be something like Stop setting impossible deadlines. That's something that I teach in another class on Skillshare. It's called my schedule with margin. But what is it that you need to stop doing and just get out of your own way. That will wrap our session on review questions. So we need to sit with the screen for a minute, think through these questions, really journal on these ideas and then join me in the next section. 5. Step 3—Organize: Now we have checked in. We have reviewed your progress so far, and now it's time to organize your thoughts a little bit. We're going to organize the things that we've discussed and we're going to apply this sort, actual planning and Productivity later in the class. So in this section we're going to begin with the question, what is working for you this year so far? What activities are products, actions or ideas are working for you and they're really clicking and they're connecting with your ideal customers. And you're soaring off of these activities. What's working so far this year? The next one I have for you is, What was your best creative business payday? What what is the thing that you did that brought in the most money this year? What products or services or selling so well for you? And what actions have been bringing subscribers, fans, and followers. It's always a good idea to take a moment and look around you for what's working so you can do more of that. And it's something we don't do often enough. And to follow that question, we're gonna go right into what isn't working. What's costing time and money without generating any return? Is there some activity or something on your schedule where the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. Looking back in online business, for me, this was Instagram, and I know Instagram can be such a great source of business for some business owners. But for me, I was spending all of my time there and I wasn't generating new email subscribers. I wasn't generating any business. I was just there for the vanity metrics. And it took me actually years to reflect back on that and think to myself, how many hours was I spending on Instagram posts a week? And there wasn't any return on it. Whereas books have been a huge return on investment. If I'd been spending the same time I had on Instagram, writing new books. I would be a lot further along. And so this is always a good question. Ask yourself. In the next question is, what do you want more of in the second half of this year? So in our last section, we talked about what feelings do you want to come out of the rest of your year? What do you want it to feel like? In this question, we're really coming into a wholesome life picture. What do you want more of in the second half of this year? Now, this might be something like more peace of mind or it could be more margin in my calendar, more breathing room, more space, more time for inspiration. Or it could be getting more things done. I'm tired of planning and I actually need to produce more published, more and put myself out there more. That leads us to this general question is, what do you want more of in the second half of this year? Let's name that. The final question in this section, considering everything we've uncovered so far, how might you change your approach going forward? Now, you have these questions in front of you on the screen. Again, if you need to pause and reflect in journal, now's a great time to do so. If anything is popping up for you, be sure to jot it down while you're thinking of it. And I will meet you in the very next lesson. 6. 3 Productivity Blindspots: Now that we've asked ourselves some questions and we've had some journaling prompts. I want to get into the tips and tricks and productivity hacks that we can cover or we can equip ourselves with so that we can really truly make the most of the rest of this year. Let me introduce you to three Productivity Blindspots that you're probably not aware of. And I'm not only going to introduce them and define them and tell you what's causing them. But we're going to talk about what to do about them and how to conquer them. They are the daily scramble, not having a landmark defined and Procrastination. So the daily scramble is where I always like to start. It's a very real threat to your success. It is where you wake up today and you ask yourself today, what am I going to do to make my business go round? What am I going to do to make my business better? And then the answer might be why I will post something on Instagram or I'll list a new product and my storefront. Or I'll finish, I'll write an outline for a book that I want to publish. But you woke up today to think about what you're going to do today. And the daily scramble will happen even if you have well-defined goals that you sent somewhere else. It happens to us all. And the reason that it happens to us all is because we're hardwired to circle the daily scramble and not having a landmark go hand in hand. We are hardwired to circle. And I really had this lesson driven home for me in one of my favorite business books of all time, clockwork. In that book they featured the 2009 study by Max Planck Institute of Biological Cybernetics, in which they confirmed that people trying to find their way through a forest or desert devoid of any landmark, identifying landmark or the sun as a beacon, tend to walk in circles as tight as 66 ft. Your brain is wired to circle things. It's the human condition. So much so that blindfolded. You would never make it across the short side of a football field. Instead, you would circle yourself off the field altogether. This was the conclusion of the study without measures of distance and direction and devoid of a landmark, human beings, that is, all of us make a continuous stream of adjustments as to what we think is straight. But these adjustments are biased to one side. So if we walk like that, you have to imagine that we think like that we are constantly making micro adjustments and it's what actually causes the daily scramble. And so now having a landmark is not only an issue in itself, it's also the cure for the daily scramble because if you have the goal or the project or whatever it is you're working toward, laid out front and center. You're seeing it every day and you're moving toward it every day, you are going to greatly enhance your chances and your efficiency of getting to that landmark in a reasonable timeframe. So the only way to overcome your human inclination to spin, toil, scramble, and hope it all pays off is to set a distinct landmark and constantly measure your distance to that mark. Be very clear with yourself in your vision of success for the rest of your year. What does done look like? What is the Landmark going to be? Let's say you've gotten past the daily scramble and your landmarks are set. What do you need to work on? And is are you keeping that front and center? Are you putting it in front of you every day? Are you writing it down in your planner that that is exactly what you're going to work on because you have to know what you're going to do next, because you have to know where you're going. So the third and final blind spot is Procrastination. And Procrastination is human nature. I was struggling to get some work done. And as I was doing so I wrote an email to my list of subscribers and I wanted to know the number one challenge that they were facing when tackling a major undertakings such as a massive spring cleanup because at the time that's what I was tackling. I was tackling a giant list of House projects and work projects and business projects, news huge. And so for me, the number one challenge I face is that my motivation is low, Procrastination is high, and most things look bleak. The mess only gets messier before it's clean. The sheer number of projects, tasks and important to dos that pop up in spring in all areas of my life and business is daunting. What was interesting to me is when I sent that email to subscribers in starting a conversation in regards to tasks and a cluttered to-do list. We ended up talking about emotions. I said to them, tackling a new project. And they said, what comes up is This is verbatim emotional baggage, stress buildup, agitation, restlessness, feeling expectant, yet stalled, like with possibility, what stuck, and a sense of self neglect. They felt trapped in old habits and negative thoughts and conditioning. When I heard from them and I made that list, I just thought, wow, look at this list. It's not even about the tasks or actions that need completed. It's not about what needs done or what is required of us. It's the way we feel about the tasks or actions that we know we should do next. I've done a ton of research on this and Procrastination is actually a universal human trait. I loved learning that and I couldn't wait to share it with you. It's a protective override in which the limbic system, and that is the more reactive part of the brain where fight or flight would happen. The limbic system, strong arms, the prefrontal cortex, and that is the logical thinking side of your brain. So when you are overwhelmed by something and when you have a mountain of to-dos and tasks on your list, your limbic system, strong arms, the smartest part of your brain, and it won't let you move or do anything about the things you know, you need to move and do something about. So let me ask you this. Have you ever been self-critical because of Procrastination? Have you ever beating yourself up because you're not getting things done? Have you ever felt entirely irrational? Because you know very logically that you should be doing something. And yet you're fully aware on a conscious level that you're also absolutely refusing to do it. Same. Same all the time. It probably happened today. When Procrastination hits, it's not just a typical resistance to hard things. It's a visceral resistance. It is taking over your whole body. It exists everywhere and nowhere at the same time, the tasks or whatever it is that you're progressing on, procrastinating on fields nearly impossible to complete against your own best interests. Because you know that you need to get something done. You're just not doing it. You're actually having an argument with yourself and your right, your limbic system. That reactionary stem of your brain is arguing with the smartest party your brain and saying, absolutely not, we're in survival mode and we won't do it. So when clutter bills, when disorganization rains, there is always some level of Procrastination involved. Procrastination is a universal human trait. I'm going to save this again and again because it's a human trait. It's our human conditioning. And yet we take such personal responsibility in overcoming it. So Blindspots know more, we see you now. We will not get lost in the daily scramble. We are not going to start off our day or are weak without the landmark clearly set in established and have it in mind. And Procrastination, you're just not going to best us anymore 7. Triggers of Procrastination: Procrastination has five triggers that cause it. So think of something that you've been procrastinating on. Just one thing, close your eyes. Don't look at my slide. Don't look, don't look at this video and think of one thing you've been procrastinating on lately. Then as I worked through this list, you'll be able to identify, is it one of these things? Is it three of these things? Is it all of these things? Because sometimes it really is. So the first triggers of Procrastination is that the work is unstructured, has no structure. It is completely all over the place. This was true of my spring cleanup. It wasn't just the garden that needed complete cleaning and a makeover. It was also the home. It was also the taxes. It was also my business projects. It was everything. And so the work was completely unstructured. It was like an elephant. And how do you eat an elephant? So in order to overcome that Procrastination, you need to reverse engineer the trigger. If it's unstructured, you have to find ways of making it structures. So in this case, one of the first things that we would do was to give it some structure, make a list of all the things that need done, and then start to put them into categories. And then once they're in categories, put them into sequential order. You'll find that when you're overwhelmed by a lot of tasks, it's typically tasks that have come completely out-of-order. You're thinking about step eight, but you have to start with step one. Once you start to add some structure to the task that will help you begin to override that Procrastination that is overriding your best interests and your best intentions. The next trigger is the task is ambiguous. And so that just means, you know, you need to do something, but it's vague of exactly what you need to do. You haven't sat down to create the vision and you haven't made it crystal clear what you want to get done. So I'm thinking of somebody who is going to deliver a grand presentation. And they really want to drive it home with next steps and next actions and maybe a product to sell afterwards. And they're vague about the entire experience. They know that they have an opportunity and they know they want it to be a big hit. But they haven't identified exactly the tasks and the meaning that is going to go with it. So to overcome this trigger, you're going to need to get very clear about what it is you're going to accomplish and what does done look like? You need to make it a more complete picture. The next is that the task is boring or not a FUN process in taxes really come to mind. For me here. Especially business Sachs is just like so involved and so boring or not, phon, is really just a feeling that is coming up for you where you just don't wanna do it, but possibly in most cases you have to do it. It's up to you. Nobody else is going to. And so the key to this is to break that down into smaller chunks and get into it. Oh, this one's really tripping me up because I hate the boring task. But whenever you are faced with something that is boring or just a really deliberate and intense process, the best thing that you can possibly do is to break it up in small chunks or sandwich it in between funner activities, leave yourself a good fund reward when it's over or after you've made some progress on it. The next is, isn't difficult, is that thing that you've been procrastinating on just really hard. And you don't know what you don't know about it and you've never done it before. And you have to try to tackle not only the task itself, but figuring out the task itself. I know I've been there, I feel this one. And so the best thing that you can do is blocks and timeout for thorough research. Start to make decisions when you're up against something difficult or something that you've never done before, there's uncertainty involved and it can really slow down your decisions that could cause actually you can start to procrastinate on the decisions to the progress that you need to make on the thing. That's the grand Procrastination trigger. One step at a time is the only way to get closer. The next and final is it disagreeable this task that you're procrastinating on, is it just something that you have to do or somebody has put upon you or imposed upon you. And it's still your responsibility, it's still your thing to get done, but it's just not what you would choose to be doing. So is it just disagreeable? Is it going against your grain a little bit? But you have to do it anyway. In that case, then you're going to want to do like the others. You're going to want to time block that. You're going to want to set up your supplies, make it easy to make a little bit of progress. One thing I'm thinking about is in my spring cleanup, It's my job to clean the balcony. And I realized that the hardest thing, I don't know if I agree with that, I don't know why it's my job. That's why I put it in the disagreeable category. But I realize the hardest thing is that supplies aren't actually readily available on the balcony. I actually second story, so I bring the hose upstairs and it's mess because we have pollen everywhere. It's crazy. I need a bucket, I need the host, I need all these things. And so I block it for a time. When p-bar round to help me, I bring all my supplies. I make it a little bit less disagreeable for myself and I just get it done. And so that's how we're going to beat those. And they are obese, Please. I know it. I do not mean to make it sound easy. These things are obese to tackle. We are all susceptible to Procrastination. I wish you well, we've removed these Blindspots. Now, go get it. The world is yours.