year end review

There are ninety days left, and they are not like the other two hundred and seventy. Spend them on purpose.

October, November and December are the only stretch of the year where you can see both ends at once. You know how the year has actually gone. And you can still change the ending.

Most people don’t. Q4 gets handed away — to the year-end push, to the holidays, to the slow slide into “I’ll start properly in January.” By the second week of December the quarter has happened to you rather than the other way round.

That surrender to January is expensive. It writes off twelve weeks, and it guarantees you arrive at the new year with the same unfinished list you started this one with — which is exactly the feeling that makes people set unrealistic resolutions to compensate.