Your Mid-Year Reset
What could your second half of 2025 look like if you did a reset?
It’s the first day of the second half of 2025. What’s going to be different than the first half?
If you want different results, you must make different decisions. You don’t need a new year to do what your future self will thank you for — you just need 15 intentional minutes today.
We all know the research: decision fatigue is real. The more mental clutter, unnecessary meetings, endless subscriptions, and draining obligations, the less energy you have for what truly matters. A 2021 Harvard Business Review article revealed that unproductive meetings alone cost companies $37 billion annually and sap our sense of autonomy and purpose.
So, here’s your mid-year challenge: channel your inner Shopify. At the beginning of every year, they delete ALL recurring meetings from every employee’s calendar. This would terrify most companies, but it works. They call it the Great Meeting Purge. What’s your version?
Pick ONE area below and hit delete today:
1. Claim Back Your Calendar: Open your calendar. Find that recurring meeting, call, or commitment that makes your stomach sink. Cancel it. “This no longer serves me” is a complete sentence. Research shows that reclaiming even 15% of your time from low-value meetings dramatically boosts productivity and well-being.
2. Digital Declutter: We live in a world of endless content and clutter. Unsubscribe from 10 things today: emails, newsletters, notifications. No guilt. Research in Cognitive Science tells us that every unread email or notification adds to mental clutter, reducing your capacity for deep work.
3. Relationship Reset: Is there a friendship that feels more like an obligation than a joy; the one that leaves you depleted instead of energized? You don’t need a dramatic “breakup.” Relationships, like seasons, have cycles. If you’ve felt this way for months, you have permission to step back. Make new choices to fill your life with people who bring energy and align with your friendship strategy.
4. The Essentialism Edit: Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, asks: “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I pay for it today?” If the answer is zero, out it goes. Use the same filter for your commitments. Would you join that committee again? That gym? That group chat? If not, release it.
Remember:
Every NO to what drains you is a YES to what restores you. Research shows that when we cut unnecessary commitments, we free up cognitive and emotional bandwidth to do what really matters, build connections that energize us and create the life we actually want.
Here’s to a mid-year delete, and the spaciousness it creates for your best work, relationships, and life.
ACTION:
This week, choose just ONE thing to delete – a meeting, a subscription, an obligation, or a stale commitment – and use that reclaimed time for something that genuinely energizes you. Small changes compound.
“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage, pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically, to say no to other things.” – Stephen R. Covey