It’s 17th December. And I wanted to catch you before you signed-off for the year.

It’s getting to that time when many of us at work are starting to wind things down for the Christmas and New Year break. Even for those who might be working over the festive period, the general climb-down by the rest of the working world has most of us bringing things to a close, right about now.

To help make the most of your downtime, I’d like to invite you to reflect on the idea of “Completion“.

Completion is a purposeful concluding activity that brings things to an orderly close, closes-out loops and ties-off loose ends. I use it extensively in my coaching engagements (both at the micro-level: of coaching conversations and sessions; and at the macro-level: of concluding entire coaching programmes), but find it to be a hugely effective technique outside of the coaching context, too.

Pause for a moment and take a mental step back from your day-to-day. Ask yourself:

• What do I need to do to feel complete?
• What priority actions need to be taken now?
• What items need to be postponed for my return?
• How will I temporarily close-out my thinking?

My tip is to focus first on the feelings of completion. Completion is not necessarily about “finishing”, per se (whatever is?); but rather is about achieving closure in the thinking.

From the brain-based perspective, completion gives ourselves permission to put-down an area of attention – and so permission to think about something else. It’s about organising the thinking to have our thoughts in place. And in particular, it’s about avoiding any unfinished connections.

Any task left unfinished or goal left unattained, when not tied-off in some way, is essentially an open connection in the brain. And that can be a major source of internal distraction. Completion is about providing the full-stop to those open connections.

So before you sign-off for the year: think about what needs to happen for you to complete on your connections. To leave you feeling complete and able to enjoy the break.