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Today, July 2nd, is the exact middle of the year. I’ve blogged about it before (see: Mid-year performance review: Giving yourself (& your business) a middle of the year check-up) but I think it’s always worth taking a moment to note the halfway point of the year especially since it almost always doesn’t feel like the midpoint at all.

If you’re having a really awful year, you may be sitting there lamenting that we’re only halfway through it. If you’re year’s been busy like mine, you’re amazed that we’re already halfway through 2014. You just can’t trust you gut when it comes to time and sometimes you need a date to jump up from the calendar like this and wave at you.

I like to take a moment to acknowledge the middle of the year and here’s just a few reasons why:

• It’s an excellent time to take stock. Where are you with your goals both personal and professional? Are you on track or behind? There’s nothing like a nice list of your accomplishments so far to make you feel better about yourself and your progress and no better wake up call than a list of things you meant to have done by now.
• It’s a great time to course correct. With as much time ahead of you as is already behind you, there’s still plenty of time to adjust if you notice a problem. Or if you’re kicking butt at life, you can either let yourself work a little less and take more breaks or power forward, increasing your goals even more.
• It forces you to acknowledge the passage of time. (I actually wrote an entire play about this topic, if it’s one that interests you.) Time speeds by and we can get so caught up in the hectic pace of life that we let days, weeks, months slip by without every really noticing. Forcing yourself to stop and say, huh, we’re right in the middle of this year can help you have a better sense of time passing around you and actually make the year seem a little longer.

Take a moment and look back on your year so far. Do you like what you see?