September has that “back to school”, back-to-reality feeling. I often feel that September is the second January of the year.
Suddenly your work and personal calendar look very different. Every work project that was paused during the summer is suddenly urgent again. It is time to set budgets for 2026. It is time to review all those personal and work goals you set for yourself in 2025. There can be big changes in households like small kids starting schools and bigger kids starting college or heading out into the workforce.
This part of the year will always be busy, but it does not have to be stressful or overwhelming.
Here are a few ways to set yourself up for success as we approach this busy period.
- “Name it to Tame it!”
Sometimes just saying out loud to your partner, your family, your work colleagues, your house mates “This is a particularly busy month”, or “The mental load is overwhelming” helps alleviate a little stress.
There can be lots of mental “to do lists” swimming around in your head. If we say it out loud, it can reduce some stress. So, name it, to tame it. If we bottle up all the feelings, they will inevitably surface in some other way like being snappy at home or at work, feeling stressed over something that you would ordinarily take in your stride or even struggling to sleep at night.
- Planning your week and considering what is important and what is urgent.
A simple way to manage the busyness of the months ahead is use the Stephen Covey’s time management matrix.
At the start of each week, take a few minutes to map your tasks (work and life) into four boxes:
- Important and urgent – These tasks cause stress and result in poor time management.
- Important but not urgent – This is box where we need to focus our time and energy. These are the tasks that are important but not necessarily urgent at this moment in time.
- Urgent but not important – These tasks can be a symptom of poor time management
- Not urgent and not important – By spending too much time in this box, we are not putting our energy to the best use.
We spend most of our time in the “urgent but not important” box reacting to emails, meetings and last-minute deadlines. Real progress happens when we spend time on the “important but not urgent” work. For example, taking time out to go to the gym or engage with your hobby, building relationships at work, strategic planning and reviewing the actions we need to take to achieve our 2025 goals.
- Finding balance
Work deadlines matter. But what also matters is arriving at the year-end without feeling completely depleted. As you plan, ask: What tasks and activities can I drop, delegate, or delay? Balance isn’t about doing less important work; it’s about pacing yourself so you can deliver without burning out.
- Creating “Micro-Moments” in your Week
With the busyness of the weeks ahead, to help relieve the build-up of stress, create little micro-moments for yourself in the week. Micro-moments can be as simple as a short walk between meetings, a coffee outside without distractions, meeting a friend for a chat or even five minutes of deep breathing at your desk. These micro-breaks reset your nervous system and can help alleviate stress.
With small intentional changes, you will arrive at December with energy left in the tank.