Hey Reader,

Most people balk at the idea of a mid-month check-in because we tend to convince ourselves we haven’t made progress and don’t want to come to terms with that reality.

This, my friend, is exactly why you need a mid-month review.

Taking stock reveals progress we forgot about, or dismissed. You learn to objectively celebrate, assess, and recalibrate – without disparaging yourself.

If you’ve been making a practice of the daily check-in and check-out process we talked about a few weeks ago, grab those notes as they’re going to come in handy.

The 6 Questions to Ask During Your Mid-Month Review

A mid-month review should take no more than 30 minutes. It’s a set of six simple questions to help you look back on your progress for the month, so you can determine what’s needed to move your projects forward.

1. What have you accomplished?
2. What goals or projects need to be adjusted or dropped?
3. What are your priorities for the rest of the month?
4. What bills need to be paid, and do you have funds in place to cover them?
5. What projects or tasks have fallen off the radar?
6. When was the last time you rewarded yourself, and when will be the next?

Put time on your calendar sometime in the next day to sit down and work through these questions. Use this worksheet to record your answers.

The Mid-Month Review and the Air Sandwich

In going through this process, you’ll likely start to see some themes and patterns emerge that can help you identify why you are or are not on target to reach your monthly goals.

As we talked about last week, one or more of these five challenges are likely creating the gap between your day-to-day reality and your goals.

Competing Priorities

Have you found it’s been hard to make real progress on any single project because your attention keeps getting diverted?

Time to conduct a project cagematch to determine what’s really a priority — better to complete or move one thing forward than shuffle through three. A cagematch can be a great way to troubleshoot your too-intense plans.

Head Trash

If you didn’t make progress in a certain area was it due to external or internal forces at play? Have your own beliefs been holding you back from making progress on your goals this month?

Your smartest next step is likely your most courageous one. Courage is more important than talent when it comes to finishing what matters most, for courageous action can build talent, but fear keeps us stuck in the confines of yesterday.

No Realistic Plan

If you’re not making progress because you’re struggling with what steps to take, it may be that you set yourself up with an unrealistic plan.

Use this SMART goals framework to reassess your projects for the month. You’ll be surprised how quickly your plan will come into focus. And you’ll have the realistic part built right in.

Too Few Resources

Halfway through the month, and you realized you don’t have enough time or money to complete what you started? Or maybe it’s that you don’t have access to the right people or necessary equipment/software for the job?

You’ll need to determine two things: 1) the resources you’d need to move forward and 2) what it will take to obtain them. Just make sure addressing the issue doesn’t become another competing priority.

Poor Team Alignment

Are you getting stuck when it comes to the points in your project that involve other people?

Make sure the plan is clear to everyone involved. Get your team to work with and for you by communicating expectations, processes, and structures needed to complete the project. Having SMART goals to start definitely helps.

Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon

An unhealthy perspective would be treating your mid-month review as a way of measuring what you haven’t done. You will not make progress if you believe your check-in will always be a time for frustration and disappointment.

A healthier perspective would be viewing the mid-month review as a tool to evaluate where you are at right now — and how you’re going to move forward. It’s important to realize these check-ins are just a way of getting closer to your destination.

Remember: any steps you make are better than all the steps you haven’t made. You are closer, and if you don’t take the time to look forward, you’ll never see that.

Stand Tall,

Charlie

Build Your Planning Team Habits

From my upcoming book, Team Habits:

Whenever we make a plan, we do so with the information available at the time. As we execute on that plan, new information, new constraints, and new priorities all arise. If we don’t continuously review and update the plan based on these new pieces, we’ll end up with some teammates working with new information and assumptions, while others continue working off the old plan. Having a plan that hasn’t been updated means everyone thinks they know what’s going on, but no one actually has the full picture.

When making plans for a team remember to include time for regular reviews and the communication of any updates to everyone involved.

Other News & Features

🏖️ We still have a few spots open for our Level Up Your Life and Leadership Retreat in Mexico next month. This week-long retreat is for leaders (inclusive of entrepreneurs) who want to re-center, re-vision, and re-align their efforts to the future they’re leading and creating. Registration closes on January 19th, so if you’re interested in joining us and are ready to have a conversation or sign up, please fill out this short form or respond to this email.

📱 This Friday, January 20 from 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. PST we're continuing our ⭐️ Getting Started with Momentum ⭐️ webinar series. We orchestrated the series to help you learn and grow through using the Momentum app, so that you can get organized to do what matters most. A Q&A session will round out the webinar so participants can receive support and elevate their app experience. Register here.