916: How to End the Year Without Burning Out: The Reset Plan Every Entrepreneur Needs

When finishing the year becomes a design choice, not a panic attack

The calendar’s final months often arrive like a siren: an invitation to sprint harder, cram more, and prove that another twelve months meant something. Yet the truest work of the season is quieter. It’s an invitation to reframe the end of the year as a bridge—an intentional passage that prepares the next chapter—rather than a cliff you must leap from exhausted. This shift turns finishing into a strategic, humane practice: fewer frantic goals, clearer filters, and habits that actually stick.

Why fewer goals can feel like a revolution

There’s an ease to adding another checkbox: goals look pretty on a list and perform well in a highlight reel. But when the prize is external validation, the emotional payoff often disappoints. The alternative Jenna Kutcher proposes is simple and radical: stop collecting goals and start using a filter. Her three-part life-giving test—peace, profit, purpose—asks whether a project calms or fries your nervous system, moves the business forward, and aligns with the impact you want to make. When you only keep items that pass at least one, preferably all three, your to-do list becomes a tailored plan instead of a performance.

Run a revenue reality audit

Not all money behaves the same in your life. Kutcher distinguishes between energy-giving revenue, energy-neutral revenue, and energy-draining revenue. The difference matters: some income looks impressive on paper while costing your focus, joy, or weekend. A practical three-month audit—categorizing income sources by how they affect your energy—reveals where the hamster wheel is disguised as growth. The tactical next step is to double down on aligned, sustainable streams and restructure or eliminate the drains. Revenue without sustainability, she reminds listeners, is just expensive busy work.

Make rhythm your operating system

Hustle culture worships the sprint. The alternative is treating seasonal work like a tempo: a sustainable pace that honors capacity. Kutcher borrows language from thinkers who emphasize sustainable intensity and argues that rhythms produce consistent results without cracking the people who produce them. Rather than trying to squeeze launches into every available week, she organizes her year so launch periods are predictable and the rest of the time runs on thoughtful, repeatable systems. The result is a business that survives and thrives beyond a single dramatic month.

Protection rituals and the habit advantage

Part of establishing rhythm comes down to protecting your attention. Kutcher describes “protection rituals” such as batch content creation, scheduled off-seasons, and device controls that limit impulsive social browsing. More than discipline, these rituals are investments in presence—especially with family and close relationships that feel the cost of your attention. Research into habit formation supports this: a behavior becomes automatic in roughly sixty-six days, so beginning practices today yields embodied routines by January. Starting habits in October or November dramatically increases the chance they stick.

Pick one bold move and a stop-doing list

There’s a strategic elegance to narrowing focus. The advice is to identify the single, needle-moving outcome for the next ninety days and build three clear actions to support it. Complement that with a stop-doing list: reclaim time by releasing meetings, delegating tasks, or saying no to projects that fragment attention. Diluted focus yields diluted results; concentrated effort, even at the cost of letting good things go, produces momentum and clarity.

Measure what you feel, not just what you do

Counting completed tasks is comforting but incomplete. Kutcher encourages tracking emotional outcomes—did this project energize or deplete you?—because those sensations forecast sustainability better than checkmarks. Daily micro-checks create identity evidence: each small habit performed is a vote for the person you are becoming. Over months, that identity shift changes how you approach work and life, moving from outcome-chasing to a lived sense of alignment.

Practical rules to end the year differently

• Audit existing goals ruthlessly; keep three to four that pass the life-giving test.
• Categorize recent income by energy impact and amplify aligned revenue.
• Design a sustainable pace—calendar audits and meeting batches guard deep work.
• Create protection rituals for social media and build habit stacks starting now.
• Choose one bold move, define three supporting steps, and compile a stop-doing list.

There is a moral and practical argument running through this approach: sustainable businesses ask less of the human and more of the system. When the end of the year becomes a place to refine rhythms and protect future capacity, January arrives as an ally instead of an ambush. The quiet labor of choosing less, structuring more, and cultivating habits now is not a concession—it is the design work of a life and company that can endure. In that light, finishing strong is not a final flourish but a cultivated posture: steady, intentional, and alive to the people you are in and outside of work.

The last line matters: a year closed with care is the most useful gift you can give your future self.