Closing the Year Properly

The week is for finishing

The final week has almost no external demand in it, which is unusual enough to use deliberately.

The temptation is to fill it with planning, because planning feels productive and requires nothing from anybody else.

The better use is finishing: closing the loops that would otherwise carry into January and arrive alongside everything January brings on its own.

A year closed properly means the first week back is a start rather than a continuation.

Monday: close what is open

• Every unanswered enquiry.
• Every unsent quotation.
• Every job awaiting a decision.
• Every message you meant to reply to.

Answer all of them, including the ones where the answer is no or not yet. An open loop costs attention for as long as it stays open, and closing twenty of them takes about two hours and clears more mental space than any amount of planning.

Tuesday: money

Which is the day with the clearest return.

Send every outstanding invoice, chase every overdue one, and note which customers habitually pay late.

Check what is due to go out in January and whether the money will be there.

Reconcile whatever your accounting expects reconciled, so the first week back is not spent on it.

And check the cards on file for anything renewing in the first quarter, which is the failure that arrives quietly in February.

Chasing invoices in the last week works better than most weeks, since the people who owe you are also clearing their desks.

Wednesday: write down what you learned

Which is the day nobody does and the one that compounds.

What broke, what surprised you, which supplier let you down, which job type lost money, which page worked, and what you would tell yourself in January.

Half a page, written while it is fresh, in whatever form comes naturally.

By February the detail will have gone entirely and only the general impression will remain, which is the least useful part.

Keep it with last year's, since two years of these is worth considerably more than one.

That document is what makes next December's reviews take an hour rather than a day.

Thursday: leave things usable

Which is for whoever comes back first, including you.

The domain list, the supplier list, the access list, and the backup procedure all current and in one place.

The automatic reply set with the right reopening date, the voicemail changed, and the listing showing the correct hours.

Anything a colleague would need to answer a customer written down rather than held in your head.

And the desk, the van, and the inbox left in a state you would be content to walk into on a Tuesday morning.

Two hours here buys a considerably better first day back.

Friday: one commitment and stop

Which is the last thing worth doing.

Write the single change for next year: one thing, a date, a person, and how you will check it.

Tell somebody what it is.

Then close the laptop and do not open it again until the date you told everybody you would be back.

A business that works through the whole break arrives in January already tired, which costs more than anything the week could possibly produce.

The stopping is part of the closing rather than a reward for it.

A worked example

A business ran this sequence for the first time.

Monday produced fourteen closed loops, four of which turned into January work simply because somebody had finally replied.

Tuesday recovered two overdue invoices from people who paid the same week.

Wednesday's half page turned out to be the most useful document they produced all year.

Thursday meant the first day back took an hour rather than a morning.

They have done it every year since and describe it as the most valuable week they work.

What not to do this week

Which matters as much as the list.

Do not start anything, since a project begun in the last week of December is a project abandoned in the second week of January.

Do not change anything technical, since nobody is available to fix it and nobody is watching.

Do not write a list of fourteen improvements.

And do not make any irreversible decision in a week when you are tired and the people you would normally consult are away.

The week is for closing, and everything else keeps until the second week of January.

Say thank you to the people who made it work

Which is the item that gets left off every checklist and costs the least.

The supplier who found something at short notice, the subcontractor who covered a difficult week, the customer who recommended you three times, and anybody who worked alongside you all year.

A short specific message naming what they actually did is worth considerably more than a card, and takes about a minute each.

Specific is the operative word, since thanks for everything reads as a round-robin and thanks for turning that job around in two days does not.

Ten of those is twenty minutes and it is the part of this week people remember in March when you need something.

The counter-case

Some businesses are busiest now.

Retail, hospitality, and anything serving people who are themselves off work have no quiet week and should do this in a genuinely slow month instead.

A five-day sequence is also more structure than a one-person business may want, and picking three of the five is a perfectly good version.

And rest is worth more than any of it for somebody who has had a hard year.

Close the open loops, deal with the money, write down what you learned, leave things usable, set one commitment, and then stop.

The week

1. Monday: close every open loop.
2. Tuesday: invoices out and chased.
3. Tuesday: check the Q1 cards.
4. Wednesday: half a page of what you learned.
5. Thursday: lists current, replies set.
6. Friday: one commitment, written down.
7. Friday: stop.

Step four is the one that compounds across years, since the detail of what broke and what surprised you is gone by February and only the half page written this week survives it.

The last-day version is covered in finishing the year without a panic.

Frequently asked questions

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