January gets all the attention. New year, fresh start, a flurry of resolutions – most of which have quietly evaporated by February. So here’s a gentle suggestion: the middle of the year is actually the better moment for a check-in. The pressure’s off, nobody’s watching, and – crucially – you now have six months of real evidence about how the year is actually going, rather than a set of hopeful guesses made in the dark days of winter.

This isn’t about grand reinvention. It’s a simple, honest twenty-minute review you can do with a notebook and a cup of something. Here’s how.

 

Why Bother Reviewing at All?

Because we rarely stop to look. We’re so busy doing the work that we almost never step back to ask whether it’s the right work. As a Harvard Business Review piece on the subject argues, reflection is what turns raw experience into actual learning – and yet it’s the first thing we drop when we’re busy. The research it draws on found that people who took time to reflect on what they’d done went on to perform measurably better than those who just kept ploughing on. Twenty minutes now can save you months of drifting.

 

The Three Questions

You don’t need a fancy system, it’s just about working through three questions honestly.

WHAT’S ACTUALLY GONE WELL?

Start here, and be specific. Not “work was fine” but “I handled that difficult client conversation better than I would have a year ago.” We’re quick to list what’s gone wrong and slow to bank what’s gone right. Banking it matters – it tells you what to do more of.

WHERE HAVE I DRIFTED?

This is the honest bit. Where has the year quietly got away from you? A goal you set in January and haven’t touched? A habit that’s slipped? A relationship you’ve let go a little cold? No judgement – just notice it.

WHAT’S THE ONE THING WORTH RESETTING?

Not ten things, just the one. The single change that would make the biggest difference to how the next six months feel. Trying to fix everything at once is how we end up fixing nothing.

Try This: Set a timer for twenty minutes, write the three questions at the top of a page, and don’t overthink the answers. The first honest thing that comes to mind is usually the right one. Finish by turning your “one thing” into a single, small next step you can take this week.

 

Keep it Light

A word of warning: a review like this can tip into a stocktake of everything you haven’t achieved, and that helps nobody. The point isn’t to give yourself a hard time – it’s to get a clearer view and a single, doable next move. If you finish feeling worse than when you started, you’ve done it wrong. We’ve written before about how progress tends to come from small, repeatable changes rather than dramatic overhauls, and the mid-year reset is exactly that.

The year isn’t a write-off if the first half didn’t go to plan, and it isn’t on autopilot if it did. Either way, twenty minutes of honest attention now is one of the highest-value things our alumni can do for the months ahead. Steer, don’t drift 🙂