There’s something about September that feels like a fresh start. Perhaps it’s all those years of new school terms, new stationery and getting back into a routine after the summer holidays. Perhaps you have children, and you are getting them ready to go back to school, buying new uniform and stationery and labelling everything ready. Or perhaps it’s simply the change in season. Whatever the reason, September has always felt a little bit like a second New Year to me.
And for business owners, I think that makes it a brilliant opportunity to pause, take stock and decide what you want the rest of the year to look like. Because you don’t have to wait until January to reset.
If you set goals at the beginning of the year, now is a good time to dig them out. How are you doing? Some might be ticked off already. (Celebrate those!) Some may still be works in progress. Some might have disappeared completely underneath the day-to-day demands of running your business. And there may be others that simply aren’t relevant anymore. That’s OK.
A lot can change in eight months. Your business can change, your clients can change and you can change. The important thing isn’t whether you’re still faithfully following a plan you made in January. It’s whether the things you’re working towards now are the things that matter to you.
Instead of looking backwards and thinking about everything you haven’t done, try looking forward. There are still four months left. What would you genuinely love to have achieved by the time you finish work for Christmas? Perhaps there’s something you’ve wanted to launch. Maybe you want to reach a particular financial goal, bring in a new client or finally finish a project that’s been hanging around for months. Or perhaps your goal isn’t about doing more at all. You might want to work fewer hours, create more space in your diary or simply feel more in control of your business.
Choose a small number of things that really matter. Write them down. Then start thinking about what needs to happen to get you there.
This is the bit that’s easy to miss. “Get more organised” isn’t an action. Neither is:
They’re goals or intentions – but you can’t put them in your diary and do them on Tuesday afternoon.
So take each goal and ask: What’s the next actual action I need to take?
Breaking the bigger goal down makes it much easier to start – and much easier to see whether you’re actually making progress. It’s something I’m a big believer in, and it’s one of the reasons I created my Productivity Planner: to help take those bigger goals and turn them into practical actions that can actually get done.
Once you’ve decided where you want to go, take a look at what’s making it harder than it needs to be to get there. Because setting new goals can very quickly turn into adding more things to an already overflowing list. Before you do that, ask yourself: What could I simplify?
You might have a manual process that takes hours every month, even though parts of it could be automated.
Or perhaps there’s a task you’re still doing because you’ve always done it – without ever stopping to ask whether it’s actually necessary.
When something isn’t working, there’s a temptation to look for a new solution.
Sometimes that’s absolutely the right answer. But not always. Sometimes your existing spreadsheet just needs restructuring. Sometimes your CRM needs cleaning up rather than replacing. Sometimes you don’t need to automate a ten-step process – you need to realise that five of the steps aren’t necessary in the first place. Before you add something new, take a proper look at what you already have.
Could it be simpler? That’s often where some of the biggest improvements can be found.
So, before September arrives, find half an hour and ask yourself these questions:
Then choose one goal to move forward and one frustration to sort out. You don’t need to reinvent your business. You don’t need 20 new goals. And you certainly don’t need another shiny new app simply because September feels like a fresh start. Sometimes the best reset is deciding what really matters – and making everything around it a little bit simpler.
A lot of my work starts with a business owner saying something along the lines of: “There must be an easier way to do this.” And very often, there is. It might involve simplifying a spreadsheet, cleaning up data, reviewing a CRM, automating part of a process or simply looking at the way something is currently being done with a fresh pair of eyes.
So, if your September Reset uncovers a spreadsheet, system or process that’s making your working life harder than it needs to be, get in touch.
I’d be very happy to help you find the easier way.
Want more practical ideas for simplifying the way you work?
I share tips, ideas and a little behind-the-scenes thinking each month in Pearls of Wisdom, the Oyster Flame newsletter.