Originally published in Kate Strzelczyk’s LinkedIn Newsletter, The KS Perspective
The middle of the year has become one of my favorite times to reflect.
January is full of ambition and energy: setting goals, building plans, and thinking about everything we hope to accomplish in the months ahead. By July, however, life has happened, priorities have shifted, unexpected opportunities have emerged, and some intentions we started the year with have naturally taken a back seat.
As I reflected on the first six months of the year, I wasn’t asking whether I was on track to accomplish every goal I’d written down in January. I was asking a different question:
What have I stopped being intentional about?
That question led me somewhere I wasn’t expecting.
A Habit I Didn’t Realize I’d Missed
The answer was handwritten thank-you notes.
At the beginning of the year, I made a conscious commitment to start writing them again. It was one of those personal goals that didn’t have a deadline or a measurable outcome, but it mattered to me because I’ve always believed handwritten notes communicate something that an email or text simply can’t. They remind us that meaningful relationships are often built through small, intentional acts.
Come June, I realized I hadn’t followed through on that commitment and that writing thank-you notes had simply become less important as other priorities took precedence.
Looking back, I wasn’t surprised. The commitments we make to ourselves are often the easiest to overlook because no one else is holding us accountable.
That experience reinforced the idea that a mid-year reset isn’t just about evaluating the goals we’ve accomplished, it’s about revisiting the goals we made and holding ourselves accountable to those commitments.
More Than a Mid-Year Check-In
Six months is enough time to intentionally decide what commitments deserve our renewed attention for the remainder of the year. When making that decision, I’ve noticed it’s often the unmeasured habits or commitments that have the greatest influence over time.
They’re the habits that shape how we build relationships, the small commitments we make to ourselves, and the values we hope will influence how we show up each day. Because they aren’t measured on a scorecard or tied to a deadline, they rarely demand our attention.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the more meaningful things we accomplish in our careers are the result of these quiet, consistent habits rather than the larger goals that show up on a performance review.
For me, it’s taking the time to write handwritten thank-you notes. For someone else, it may be reconnecting with a mentor, making more time for family, or recommitting to a professional goal that was set aside. The specific goal matters less than taking the time to intentionally decide what’s worth carrying forward.
The KS Perspective
From my perspective, what made my mid-year reset valuable is having the opportunity to pause, reflect, and reset my priorities to determine whether what I identified in January is still aligned with my professional goals.
The second half of the year doesn’t always require a brand-new direction, sometimes, it simply requires us to hold ourselves accountable to what we wanted to prioritize in the first place.
And handwritten notes may not determine whether I have had a successful year, but they do influence the kind of relationships I want to build and the person I strive to be.
For continued insights on executive hiring, leadership alignment, and organizational structure, subscribe to The KS Perspective on LinkedIn.
