Musings on November

November is a strange time of the year. It is when people around (including me) begin realizing that the end of the year is near. Surrounded by a barrage of social posts and conversations reminiscing on how quickly the year rushed by, I find myself caught between obsessing over 2023 goals, wanting to achieve them all within the next 60 days on one hand and wanting to kick back and slow down on the other. In past years, I have spent so long in this limbo that soon it’s Christmas and I did neither. Maybe December is reserved for end of year musings but December is also too late to achieve it all.

As I sat down to determine what my theme/challenge/intention for this month will be, I found the answer in one word – reflection. 2023 has been quite the year and while I will dedicate December to celebrating the wins and preparing for the year ahead, November is the ideal month to decelerate and reflect on the year that has been; to slow down & fight the urge to speed up. As a status update, I have completed only seven of my 24 goals for the year with line of sight to three others, which brings me to less than a 50% achievement rate. The urge to accelerate is real. However, as I sit down to pen my thoughts, accelerating felt like exactly the wrong thing to do.

What does this have to do with the workplace? Everything!

At the start of the year, like every team in the world, my team too set ambitious goals. Life happened, other tasks took over, and as we approach the end of the year there’s a realization that we are far from where we planned to be. With that realization, there’s a push to accelerate and end the year on a high. But the exhaustion of the year has begun to show and maybe, just maybe, instead of going full force ahead, it is time instead to slow the pace and begin deep reflections on the year gone by; especially in November before everyone gets into holiday mode.

I don’t know if it’s the same where you are but given year end performance reviews, retrospectives and goal setting exercises, it is usually April if not May that goals are set – leaving us with just half a year to achieve them all. Maybe November is when we do it all instead. To this end, I am traveling next week to engage with the larger team to do exactly that: a lot of socializing with my international colleagues but also deep reflections on where we are, how we got here and where we want to go.

I am bringing the same energy back into my personal life.

So, here’s my very long-winded way of stating my challenge for November – fight the urge to accelerate and slow down instead; light a few more candles, watch the world go by and embrace the winding down of what’s been a gorgeous year.

Before I go though – where is your energy taking you? Are you picking up pace or slowing it down? Let me know.