Ep. 320 Year-End Tips: Setting boundaries and finalising projects

In this week’s episode, Anna shares essential year-end tips to help you wrap up your year neatly so you can enjoy a restful festive break and return recharged and ready to start the new year strong. Whether you’re a solopreneur, coach, speaker, or consultant, this episode will offer practical advice on finalising outstanding work, organising your admin, and setting clear boundaries to ensure you truly unwind over the holidays. So, let’s dive in and make sure we’re all set to sail off into a peaceful, joyful Christmas period.

Key moments:

[00:00] Overview of wrapping up the year and taking a festive break.

[01:08] Steps for completing or clearly communicating project timelines.

[03:53] Tidying up work space, finances, and outstanding payments.

[05:59] Importance of out-of-office emails and establishing clear communication.

[08:22] Key questions to reflect on successes and plan for the new year.

[10:00] Seeking Support – Information on booking strategy sessions in early January.

Resources mentioned:

• The 5Ls Balanced Success Assessment
• The-12 Month Business Blueprint
• Invest in a Half-Day Strategy Session

Year-end tips

Twas the week before Christmas and we only have a few days to wrap up so that we can enjoy lovely, slightly straight, stressful, indulgent family time over the festive period.

Now, I don’t want to put you off, but it is a little bit too late to, for me to give you a lot of advice as to how you can finish projects and close things off. And so, and hopefully you’ve been kind of busy doing that. But I do just want to give you some gentle advice and reflections for the next few weeks to allow you to really take that break, be present with your family, which ultimately is what matters for most of us at the heart of why we do what we do, and also to leave things nicely kind of wrapped up so we can pick up where we left off for the new year. So I hope you find this useful in wrapping up with a nice little bow to sail off into the Christmas holidays. So look, it is just around the corner whether you’re already winding down, maybe as you listen to this, you’re scrambling to finish some last minute tasks. I’m hoping to give you a few quick and simple steps so that you can feel organised and ready to start next year strong. I know it’s a bit of an arbitrary, you know, calendar time that we’ve made up as humans, but it is what it is and most of us are taking that time off. I know some of you listen down under, which I really appreciate and of course you don’t have, well, rather the other way around.

You have a longer break, in fact, I believe for the summer. So this is even more important for you, I suppose, to wrap things up. And you might want to listen to my summer episodes that I also have from earlier this year. But we want to look at, you know, what are the key tasks that you want to focus on and how can you set those boundaries. And then also a few reflections over the holiday period because whether you have some quiet time, if you’re very lucky, or you just need a break, you know, going for walks, spending time with family, having a bit of time to read and journal, that kind of thing is really valuable. So in terms of kind of last minute, this is really now, you know, the kids in my case are finishing half finished school, really final dash to get presents organised and food. We’ve got Christmas Eve and Christmas Day ours this year. There’s a lot to do.

So hopefully when you listen to this, I will have done all those things and I’ll be ready and feeling good about everything from a personal Christmas perspective. But in terms of work, obviously you want to complete your outstanding deliverable. So try now to finalise any client work or projects that need to be wrapped up before the holidays. The reality is other people are going to be out too, so, so don’t worry too much. But you know, there still needs to be some kind of closure. If there was anything you’ve committed to doing before, then of course you need to finish that. If it can’t be completed before the break, make sure you’re communicating really clear timelines for the new year. So no one’s left either sort of panicking or sending you last minute emails over the break saying, hey, why is this not here? Why haven’t we got this? Da da, da.

So be super, super clear about that. Rather sort of anticipate what could go wrong now. So finalise if you can, but if not, at least be clear about what will happen in the new year to reassure people so that they know that you haven’t forgotten is quite important. The second thing is not so sexy, but why not use this time? You know, tidy up your admin, obviously. Send chase any invoices for outstanding payments. You want to get that money in for the very expensive Christmas periods if you can, you know, just look at your finances. Obviously. The last couple of weeks I’ve shared episodes on reviewing the past year and planning for next year.

So that’s work that I hope you will have already or soon be able to carve out time to do and then why not? Look, I’m looking around, my desk is still pretty messy because honestly, although I kind of of course move things out of the way when I do my videos, tidying is never a priority because if I’m in my office, I’m working. If I’m not working, then I want to be downstairs with family or exercising or doing fun things. So I need to find a way to make tidying my office more of a priority. I certainly urge you to wrap things up, you know, again, so we can start fresh in January. If you do have a dedicated workspace, as I do, mine will be pretty much untouched for at least a couple of weeks. So it’d be nice if I came back early January and everything was kind of lined up and organised. And you may also find some unpaid bills or other things that you forgot to do. So try to tidy up your workspace as well.

And then I haven’t actually done this in a while, partly, I think, because I have Mac mail and for some reason I thought you can’t do out of office emails, but certainly if you’re in corporate, obviously you’ll be sending or setting up an out of office email. I always laugh when people have an out of office that says, hey, I’m going to be out for two minutes. So, you know, bear with me, don’t worry. If you’re just out for a day or two, I think that’s fine. But obviously if you’re in a job or if you’re in a role where people need you urgently, be super clear, have that out of office email set up, set those clear boundaries to your clients. I always say, you know, I won’t be reachable. In fact, probably I’ll say this year on WhatsApp, this is where you can go if you need help, if there’s something urgent. But generally I found it’s kind of false urgency.

The year when I first started coaching, early on, I wanted sew to please everybody and to support everyone. I didn’t want to let them down. So I booked lots of calls in December, inevitably every single person cancelled and so just unnecessary stress for me, you know, organisation. And it’s just much better to be super, super clear. Look, this is what we’re taking off. Book a call for New Year. Boom. Everybody will be happy, I promise.

So send clear guidelines on how to reach you or not during the break. Maybe you have an assistant or you can put other in your out of office. And of course you can, why not send a little wishing you a lovely festive season email or a final Christmas newsletter or whatever it is to celebrate your wins. Thank everyone for working with you and wish them well for the new year. So that’s it really in terms of kind of key tasks for this week, you know, Pretty obvious. But complete your projects if you can. If not, communicate timelines for the new year, tidy up your admin and if possible, your desk and finances certainly. And then, you know, send those boundaries to team members as well as clients and an out of office autoresponder if you want.

If that will help for you not to cheque your email. Then again, do have a listen if you haven’t already, to the episodes from the last couple of weeks, reviewing the past year and looking ahead if you can’t be bothered with that because you know at the end of the year now you’re probably like Anna, I can’t do another few minutes even of hearing your voice. That’s fine, I won’t be offended. Then just ask yourself a few key questions like what am I most proud of this year? What am I most proud of? What didn’t go quite as planned and what lessons can I take from that? Right. What lessons can I learn from the things that went a bit wrong or not quite as planned? And what do I want my business to look and feel like in 2025? What do I want it to look and feel like next year? What’s one thing I can do differently next year to align my business with those goals? Right. So again, what am I most proud of this year? What didn’t go as planned? What can I learn from that? What do I want my business to look and feel like next year? And what’s one thing I can do differently to align my business with those goals? Okay, I think I’ll leave it there. I’ll have a couple more festive messages for you next week and the following week if you can bear to hear my voice again. But again, I won’t be offended if you’re completely offline and with your family.

I applaud you for doing so. And if you do want support, I’m afraid it’s too late now to have support with wrapping up 2024, but I am still offering a handful of one off strategy sessions in early January. So quickly email me still this week as I’m still online partially at least I’ll be able to get that booked in for you for the New year. It’ll be in the show notes. You can also cheque out onestepoutside.com and hopefully find what you need. Or you can email me at. Well, so I was going to say podcastonesstepoutside.com yes, that’s still a good email. And yeah, that’s it really.

So look, I hope these steps help you feel a bit more in control, ready to take a proper break. It’s probably just a reminder of what you already know. We’ve only got a few days left, so I’ll say thank you so much for being here with me this year and I will send you a proper Merry Christmas message next week. And but if I don’t hear from you then, or if I don’t speak to you via the podcast, then I wish you a restful and joyful holiday season and I will see you in 2025. See you then. Bye for now. If you are at a pivotal moment in your career, if you’re looking at that next level of success and you want more support to get you to where you want to be, then get in touch so we can have a conversation about where you are today and how I might be able to help. Apply for a free call@onestepoutside.com call that’s onestepoutside.com call.

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