Playing to the final whistle 2022 - Money and Investing with Andrew Baxter

 Christmas Holiday Shutdown

After a long, hard year of work, we can often take our foot off the gas for the last couple of weeks before a holiday as though we have started our break early. This can manifest itself in employees going through the motions in the early part of December and if you have the end of the December and early January off work, then you will find yourself quite a way behind the eight ball. Host Andrew Baxter notes that if you’re taking it easy through December for a couple of weeks before your time off, you are effectively losing nearly one sixth of your possible productive time for the year. Clearly, this is a significant amount of time and if you’re working on self improvement and trying to succeed in your life, then perhaps it is important you find a way to dig deep and work hard through this period. If you have set goals, time is your ally and by relinquishing so much of it just because you want to clock off early, you risk failing to reach your goals.

Changing Your Routine

Many call it the silly season and with good reason. We can convince ourselves it is okay to break our routines at the end of the year merely because we are approaching Christmas. The reality is though, that doing so and breaking our routines may contribute to our clocking off and cause us to fail to finish off that final part of what we are doing or even our overall goals for the year. Andrew Baxter points out that part of the satisfaction of a break at the year’s end is knowing that you have achieved not only highly, but that you have also put in all available effort throughout the year to reach your overall goals.

How to Avoid Clocking Off

There are a few ways to prevent an end of year consisting of coasting to the finish line. Host Andrew Baxter finds that setting a hard finish line is a great way to ensure that your employers (in his case) or even you continue. to work until that finish line date. As he suggests segmenting each and every day, segmenting your year into periods for work and times when you can relax. Avoiding burnout is vital to ensure sustained long-term performance and success, but clocking off in a time when you should be working hard to improve does not put you in good stead over the long-term. You can start to execute some of the daily segmentation rituals into your yearly calendar to help you break up the year and recognise when it really is time to relax. 

Doing the Basics

Noting that things can start to feel more difficult towards the end of the year we should be focusing on doing the little things right. Host Andrew Baxter suggests as an overall principle to work out what takes the least talent and become the best at it. Instead of trying to break new records at the back end of the year when you may be feeling a bit flat, perhaps the smart thing to do is focus on nailing the basics and achieving what you can and not worrying about what you may not be able to do right now. By ensuring your nail all of the basic things like showing up on time for starters, you automatically raise the standards by which you operate. Doing so at the end of the year can put a nice full stop on the year that’s been while also putting you in the right place for the next year on the way.

Easy Decisions vs Hard Decisions

The deeper into the year we get, the more challenging it can become to make the hard decision. Andrew points out however, that it is almost always the hard decision that will serve you the best in the long run. Doing things the hard way harden us for the future when we are only presented with the hard way. So, as we head into the end of this year, try to make the hard decisions and don’t take the easy way out. Particularly in the workplace, it is a great tone to set not taking the easy way out and can lead to a stronger team culture and ultimately better results.