December has a way of asking a lot from professionals. We’re wrapping up projects, final reports, completing reviews, offering care to teams, navigating family rhythms, and doing our best to maintain our own wellbeing in the process. It’s a month that holds both celebration and strain, and the pace often leaves little room for thoughtful reflection and recalibration.
However, closing a year well isn’t a luxury, and it doesn’t need to be overly sentimental or strategic. It’s simply about being prepared for the time ahead. I once heard that “we don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems”, and believe that speaks volumes in this context. For instance, suppose your goal is to secure a key grant for your organization in 2026. Simply wishing for the funding won’t make it happen. What determines success are the systems you put in place: a successful track record in their area of interest, mapping deadlines and submission requirements, seeking out advisors, sourcing partners (if needed), drafting and revising proposals, coordinating with your team for supporting documents, building relationships with key stakeholders, etc. It’s the consistent, intentional preparation, not the goal itself, that makes the outcome possible.
The purpose of this article is to offer a series of four exercises (Reflect → Release → Recalibrate → Re-Enter) that you can step through to audit the quality of your personal and professional ‘systems’ (habits, behaviors, boundaries, etc.) this past year, and consider how to strengthen them to carry you into the next year with more clarity, capacity, and confidence.
The goal is not a perfect plan for the new year.
The goal is to begin January grounded, prepared, and excited.
Please remember that reflection isn’t about dwelling on the past; it’s the deliberate and honest act of mining yesterday to shape a sharper tomorrow.
Don’t rush this part. Reflection creates meaning, and meaning creates momentum!
Many professionals hesitate to use the word burnout for fear of sounding “weak”, but burnout isn’t a label, it’s important feedback that something needs to change. Burnout can show up in many forms, including:
Did you experience burnout this year? If so, what do you believe caused it?
Before setting new goals or intentions, practice subtraction. Release anything that is no longer enabling who you’re becoming.
This is not about abandoning responsibility, but rather about creating more space for you to expand into new and more meaningful roles.
This exercise draws on the Designing Your Life concepts of life-view and work-view, and perhaps more importantly, how they intersect.
In the Designing Your Life framework:
When these drift apart, we feel friction. When they merge, we experience ease, clarity, and direction. Please use the prompts below to reflect on your life- and work-view. To help clarify them for yourself, take ~60-minutes (total) to write a ~250 word reflection for each.
Professionals often enter January with a mix of ambition and dread. But January doesn’t require a massive reinvention; it requires thoughtful re-entry.
Instead of beginning the year with defined resolutions, consider reframing your approach with curiosity. Design small experiments for yourself as a way to prototype what solution might actually feel and work best for you. In other words, learn your way into a better year rather than forcing one into existence.
These experiments can be simple, time-bound shifts (30–60 days) that allow you to test, observe, and refine what truly supports your work and well-being. Collectively, they should be informed by what worked well for you this past year, avoid what consistently didn’t, and help bring your life- and work-views into closer alignment.
At this time, you’ve carried a full year of labor, relationships, pressures, wins, and losses. December is your chance to pause and make some sense of it all.
When you reflect honestly, you see what energized or drained you.
When you release mindfully, you make space for what matters most.
When you recalibrate to better align your life-view and work-view, you find clarity in what to prioritize.
When you re-enter with purpose, you design small experiments that help you grow and learn about yourself in the process.
Join R+R in stepping into the new year not hoping for better days, but setting yourself up to create them!
*If you found value in this series of exercises and want to go further, please consider looking into R+R’s Designing Your Life retreat in Costa Rica in March 2026.