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How to use the energy from just after the vacations throughout the year!

You know this? Being on vacation. Getting disconnected from work. Laptop closed and also slowly emptying your inner brain inbox. This usually takes a few days. Then comes the rest and enjoying the environment, the freedom, the people around you. Work is in fifth place. Until a few days before you start working again, that’s when it starts itching. You feel like changing course for the second half of the year. “We’re going to do things differently!” echoes through your head. Teamwork better, results up, position yourself differently, organize work differently. Bam, you’re on, you’re feeling ’em! But how do you make sure you stick to your resolutions and that they don’t get bogged down? In this blog my personal approach. Perhaps you’ll find it helpful.

The phenomenon of “giving yourself an upgrade with fresh courage” is greatest around the turn of the year. The famous good intentions. Frenziedly you Google the nearest gym, grab the yoga mat from the attic again and do a quick search for that one healthy diet. Somehow you know it will not last. But the resolutions genuinely feel really good and energizing. This time is different. This time you will keep it up. Set the pedal to the metal with fresh courage.

Even though there is no turn of the year now, the same thing is happening. So just after the vacation season, I literally see it happening all around me. Take a look at your Linkedin timeline, I bet it’s bulging with connections starting fresh with a new job. Even on the moors it’s bursting with heath days in September. Just getting their noses in the same direction with new impetus. And even Orange, with Louis van Gaal and 17 million national team coaches, is advancing confidently towards the World Cup. So we are used to wanting to start something new after a benchmark (like your vacation) with a lot of motivation. Katherina Milkman calls it the Fresh-start Effect.

This is how the Fresh-start Effect works

Fresh-start Effect, let’s knock it flat for a moment. Simply explained, it begins with the observation that there are certain annual repeating benchmarks. For many people, these benchmarks will be the turn of the year and right after the vacations. But on a more personal level, it can also be your birthday, the start of a new quarter, a new project or the start of your new job.

During those benchmarks, you rise above yourself. Two interesting things happen. First, in that moment you see the bigger picture of how you perform and function. And the second is perhaps even more fascinating: you distance yourself from your inferior self. You separate the “me” that sometimes did not perform well in the past period, was momentarily wrong or off, from the “me” that will do things completely differently in the period ahead. Without obstacles from the past, you create a lot of energy to change. Not inhibited by any blockage whatsoever. Thus, the Fresh-start Effect.

Take eager advantage of a fresh start. Year-round

With me, this effect works all too well. I am always very much looking forward to a new year and after a vacation I am bouncing to start again with fresh energy. What’s more: at our house, the agreement is that during a vacation, I can only indicate that I really want to get back to work 2 days before I go back to work. This is so as not to spoil the vacation joy of the others.

But admittedly, I also always struggled with the question of how to retain that energy. It is of course great fun to do a kind of review and retrospective with yourself twice a year and make a new sprint planning with an updated definition of done. But then it’s convenient that it all has a longer-lasting effect. (And that I’m not stuck with a 12-month gym membership at the end of January every year, which I’m not going to do anything with anyway) How do you manage that? I do it like this.

Here’s how to retain the energy of the Fresh-start Effect

Actually, it’s very simple, but oh so effective. Here are three tips from my own practice:

• Create multiple benchmarks per year. Just the New Year and the vacations is not enough for me. But it doesn’t work to make every week a benchmark. My clear benchmarks are: the turn of the year, closure of quarters, my birthday, (half) yearly figures, vacations, start of new marketing campaigns and the start of Agile transitions. This way I create enough moments for myself to see the bigger picture and create new energy for change. The key is to create multiple cycles per year.
  
  
• Allow yourself regular review, retrospective and sprint planning. We work with 2-week sprints at Scrum Academy (right now). But I also personally like to look back on my performance. I do that every other week with a long walk. The effect is that, independent of a benchmark, I can consciously make timely adjustments and recharge my energy. Every now and then I use an external coach. That keeps me extra sharp and gives depth to issues that I don’t see through a blind spot.
  
  

• Stay fit. I put quite a bit of time into my mental health, as well as my physical health. Admittedly, I do go overboard with this sometimes (and get injured), but it also helps me stay in good balance: work hard, exercise hard, relax hard. The effect of this is that I don’t lose energy easily and always feel like tackling something. As a friend said the other day, “you get off the couch easily.

Create your own Fresh Start Framework

Ask yourself the following questions and create your own course of action:

• What are the benchmarks for me in a year?
• How do I keep myself on track and look back regularly?
• How do I keep my own energy high?
  
  

Once you’ve found the answers to these questions you’ll have a great framework for yourself to pop motivated throughout the year. Now just after the vacations if you want to make the most of the Fresh-start Effect take a look at what we can do for you at our extensive training offerings. Or give me a call and together we’ll see what we can do for your organization. 2021 will be over soon, but there is still plenty of time to pop!