Month-in-Review Highlights: August 2022

A surprise candid shot captured of me in the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais Royal in Paris, France. August 17, 2022.

I postmortem each month shortly after it ends, reflecting on what happened in general and, more specifically, in the context of my goals. Though I don’t share all my insights here, I have made it a practice to share at least one key highlight or insight. (To read previous months’ reviews, click here.)

Given the amount of activity I had planned in August—travel to see my mother in Belgium at the end of her cruise, a stayover in Paris on the way back to Lausanne from Brussels, the cramming of work and planning in the windows between—I might have forgiven myself some slacking on goals progress in August.

And yet!

I kept most of the high- and medium-priority projects moving forward on schedule. Forgive me if I feel a bit of pride about that.

Further, the low-priority projects, the ones I did slack on over the last month, are ones that I wonder shouldn’t stay low-priority for the rest of the 2022 goals period. At this time of year, I start to notice patterns in my goal progression and with the objectives that have very little elbow grease to date, I question why.

In some cases, I’ve simply procrastinated because the process of doing the work—not the result, of course—bores me. For these goals, I need to kick myself into gear—as I did with that tedious accounting stuff I mentioned a couple months back. Low-priority goals also include things I put down that seemed like good ideas or “should” ideas, but that don’t really align with my priorities. (How important is it really that I find a “tactile” hobby?)

In other cases, I start to wonder if the goals I’ve put down for the year don’t move me forward to the larger life objective—if I haven’t targeted the wrong interim goal for the bigger picture plan. I have a few goals on my list for 2022 that have started to feel out of alignment with what I’d hoped they’d achieve when I put them down on the page. Investing energy into them when acting on other planned projects will carry me forward and get me where I want to go may not make sense.

The coming month or two will tell, but I’ll somewhat stay the course on even these now-questionable goals for now to see how early-autumn events unfurl.

I hope your 2022 has started to wind down well!