A PMTales Holiday Special: The New Year Reset (Vol. 1, Issue 10)

Excerpt:

A New Year dispatch from Deliveria—a short, honest tale about endings, beginnings, burnout, and the quiet hope that maybe, just maybe, next year’s project plan will survive until February.

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In Deliveria, the end of the year has a very specific energy.

People are tired but pretending not to be. Leadership sends emails titled “Quick Update” that are anything but quick. Teams are running on caffeine, optimism, and a mysterious energy force known as Holiday Survival Mode. And PMs everywhere begin whispering the most sacred year-end phrase:

“We’ll deal with that in January.”

This week’s dispatch is a holiday short—an honest look at the final stretch of the year, where projects wobble, deadlines drift, and everyone is counting the days until the calendar gives us psychological permission to start over.

A Tale from the Trench

Two Decembers ago, I found myself in what I call The Pre-Holiday Incident.

We had a final meeting scheduled—one last session before the entire team scattered into vacationland.

The agenda was simple:

1. Wrap up loose ends

2. Finalize outstanding risks

3. Agree on a January restart plan

4. Leave early and pretend nothing will blow up over the break

Four steps. Four innocent steps.

But December meetings are never innocent.

As soon as we started, someone said:

“We should probably revisit the entire roadmap.”

In December? Now? With 17 minutes left in the meeting and half the team already mentally in pajamas?

But the suggestion ignited something. Suddenly, everyone had thoughts. The roadmap was declared “misaligned,” “ambitious,” “vague,” “fine,” “not fine,” “too detailed,” and “not detailed enough”—all in the same breath.

December is chaos disguised as productivity.

By the end, nothing was resolved. Everything was documented. And everyone agreed this was a “great starting point for January.”

Which is PM-speak for:

“This is 'Future Us' problem. Present Us is going on break.”

The Holiday Paradox

Every New Year, PMs make silent promises:

• Next year I’ll keep documentation up to date.

• Next year I’ll push back sooner.

• Next year I won’t let Scope Creep move in rent-free.

• Next year my RAID log won’t become archaeological evidence.

• Next year we’ll actually do retrospectives before things explode.

These promises are beautiful. And also slightly delusional.

Because the truth is:

New Year energy isn’t about perfection. It’s about relief.

It’s the one reset button we actually believe in. A momentary pause where we convince ourselves the incoming year will be calmer, cleaner, and less politically confusing.

And then January arrives like:

“Surprise! Everything you didn’t finish last year is still here.”

Still warm. Still urgent. Still inconsistently documented.

Survival Lesson #10: Choose What You’re Carrying Into the New Year

Before the year flips, take five quiet minutes and ask yourself:

1. “What am I leaving in this year?”

Maybe it’s:

• a useless report

• a painful process

• a timeline that lied

• a deliverable that resurrects itself

• a level of perfection you can’t afford anymore

2. “What am I carrying forward with intention?”

Maybe:

• a better boundary

• a clearer script

• a habit of naming misalignment sooner

• one tool that actually works

• or one truth you’re done ignoring

3. “What’s no longer my job emotionally?”

This is the big one. The one PMs avoid.

Your value isn’t in absorbing the emotional load of an entire project ecosystem. Leave that weight behind.

Carry your skill. Not their anxiety.

A PMTales New Year Insight

Here’s the real reset:

A PM’s year doesn’t change when the calendar changes. It changes when the PM decides what enough looks like.

Enough:

• clarity

• protection

• sanity

• honesty

• boundaries

• courage

Pick one.Take it into the new year like a talisman.

Protect it.

From the PMTales Academy

If you need support going into January:

The PM Survival Fundamentals - Start the year with awareness, not exhaustion.

Scope Creep Self Defence - Perfect for starting January with fewer “surprises.”

The Stakeholder Whisperer - Refresh your project’s reality before stakeholders refresh their demands.

Field Note of the Week

The New Year won’t magically fix your project.

But it can fix your approach to the project.

And sometimes, that shift is enough to save the whole thing.

Until Next Week

May your year end gently, your January start slowly, and your deliverables stay frozen until you return.

Happy New Year from the trenches,

D.B. Trench

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