Review, Reflect & Recommit

Review, Reflect & Recommit

Another Labor Day Weekend has come and gone. Every shiny New Year seems to hold endless possibilities and the need to make or renew resolutions. As the year progresses and our lives are so busy, it is easy to lose track of those goals. Now is a great time to Review, Reflect and Recommit.

Usually, it is the end of the year that most people take the time to review their New Year resolutions. However, it may be more productive to stop sometime during the year and review and reflect on goals and recommit to the yet to be accomplished goals. Here are some questions to ask about your resolutions.

Did you actually complete one or all of your resolutions? If you have achieved all of your resolutions, I extend my congratulations to you. Remember to take time to celebrate your achievements before you dash off to the next goal. Reflect on your success, and evaluate what worked, and what did you learn from each goal or process.

If not complete, did you make any progress on your goals? If you have made progress, give yourself a pat on the back, regroup, and look at what it will take to reach completion before the end of the year. Review your resolutions, then make an updated plan and take action. If it feels overwhelming then evaluate what is your top goal and break it down into smaller tasks and work the plan that way.  You don’t have to get everything done. Maybe the goals not accomplished this year will roll to next year if at all.

If you did not tackle your resolutions at all, are you feeling guilty? It may be that you wanted to bring in new business with a direct mail program to absentee owners. Then, you received the opportunity to purchase 100 accounts from a retiring property manager. This would definitely change your focus, time, and budget. In this scenario, it would be non-productive to feel guilty about putting absentee owners on the back burner when something happened to achieve your end goal of increased management accounts. It is time to reevaluate this goal and perhaps postpone it until next year. When you feel guilty try to assess what got in the way of accomplishing that goal?  Sometimes, we just need to give ourselves permission to postpone the goal, or maybe cross it off our list permanently and be ok with not doing that task.

What has kept you from accomplishing your goals? Sometimes events happen that just sidetrack or prevent us from our goals. Maybe we had a key employee leave the company, or we had personal constraints on our time. A few years back I was care giving family members and that was a higher priority for me so of course some of my business goals didn’t get accomplished. This is where stepping back and changing your perspective on the situation can be helpful. I chose to feel blessed to be able to care for my family and I cherish those memories today now what they are gone.

Do you really want to accomplish the resolutions you made? It’s time to be honest with you. You may have decided you want to double the number of doors you manage, example: 500 to 1000. The bottom line is you personally do not want to run a company that large. You realize bigger is not always better and increasing your office space and staff is not what you want to do. Reevaluate your goals honestly and renegotiate with yourself.

Did you plan too many goals? This is a very common mistake and often hard to resist. Sometimes we get too enthusiastic and set ourselves up for failure. STOP – don’t think of it as failure. Instead, look at your goals objectively; pick out what you can do, save the rest for later, or discard the ones that are not within your reach at this time.

Do your resolutions no longer apply? Life is full of detours and surprises. You may have started the year in one place but events changed and now your resolutions do not fit into your life. Cancel them out in your thinking, on paper, and figure out what does work. Ask yourself the simple but very powerful question, “What do I want?”

Is this exercise worth it? You bet. It is always good to Review & Reflect  on what you have accomplished, and Recommit to what you are doing, where you are going, and how you want to get there. It’s simply a matter of taking the time to gain something in life that is always valuable – PERSPECTIVE.

Kathleen Richards, is the owner of LandlordSource, The Property Management Coach, and Portola Property Management, Inc. She has authored Property Management A-Z, and teaches regularly at community colleges and conferences on property management. She has been active in her field and holds professional designations as Master Property Manager (MPM®) and Residential Management Professional (RMP®) from NARPM®. Kathleen has served at the local and state level on the boards for NARPM® (National Association of Residential Property Managers).

Disclaimer: LandlordSource does not represent the article content in this website as legal advice. It is shared information only and up to the reader to use this information responsibly, seeking legal advice as necessary to their business.