Heat Check: What’s Working (and Not) In Your Career or Business This Year?
August arrives quietly but powerfully, nestled between the heat of summer and the return of fall routines. It’s often seen as a month of transition—vacations are winding down, schools are gearing up, and work teams are preparing for the final quarter of the year. It’s also the perfect moment for a heat check. Not just a casual glance at your goals, but a thoughtful, honest reflection on what’s actually working in your career or business—and what isn’t. This month offers a unique space to pause and assess with enough time left in the year to course correct meaningfully.
Unlike January, which tends to be full of pressure and lofty resolutions, or December, which is often too late for impactful shifts, August offers a midpoint. It's a quieter window to get real about what has unfolded over the past eight months and to look ahead with fresh clarity. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, people leader, team contributor, or job seeker, taking the time to reflect mid-year is not just a good idea—it’s a strategic one.
This heat check doesn’t need to be overwhelming. It can begin with a few grounded questions: What’s bringing energy, momentum, and joy to your work right now? What feels stagnant, confusing, or draining? What goals have you been crushing—and which ones have you avoided completely? These aren’t questions meant to inspire shame or judgment, but rather tools to help you align your day-to-day work with the long-term vision you hold for yourself. The more honest you can be in this reflection, the more powerfully you can move into the final months of the year.
What’s Working – Spotting Your Wins and Building on Them
As you take stock, it’s important to recognize and amplify what is working. Often, we’re so focused on what needs fixing that we miss the momentum we’ve already built. This is your moment to celebrate progress, even if it doesn’t look like the win you originally imagined. Maybe a project you led made an unexpected impact, or a new partnership opened doors you weren’t even targeting. Perhaps you finally feel seen at work or have found a rhythm in your entrepreneurial journey that feels more sustainable.
Wins aren’t always about dramatic results. Sometimes they look like small shifts in mindset—trusting your voice more in meetings, saying no to misaligned opportunities, or setting healthier boundaries with your time. These are not minor victories. They are signs that you are growing in wisdom and intentionality. Recognizing these moments is essential because what you focus on grows. If something is working, ask yourself why. What habits, support systems, or decisions contributed to that success? What role did your mindset or environment play? Then ask: how can I double down on that?
When something’s working, it’s not always about expanding it wildly. Sometimes it’s about reinforcing the infrastructure around it. If a particular product, offering, or professional relationship is yielding results, now is a great time to tighten the process, add more visibility, or extend the shelf life. Similarly, if you’re in a season of career stability after a period of chaos, that’s a win too—one worth protecting by maintaining your well-being and building upon your current momentum with care.
This is also a moment to reflect on alignment. Do the parts of your work that are working also feel aligned with your long-term goals or values? If so, keep nurturing them. If not, this heat check offers the chance to reassess. Sometimes something can be successful on paper but completely out of alignment with where you’re trying to go. It takes courage to call that out, but doing so now saves you from waking up six months from now wondering why you’re still chasing something that doesn’t serve you.
What’s Not Working – Signs, Signals, and the Shift Ahead
Now for the tough love part of the heat check. It’s time to take a look at what’s not working—and get honest about why. It might be a process that keeps stalling, a goal that never gets traction, or a relationship dynamic that’s quietly eating away at your energy. These are the things we often convince ourselves will get better with time or push to the back burner because they’re uncomfortable to face. But avoiding them doesn’t make them go away. If anything, the longer you ignore them, the more they cost you—in time, peace, and impact.
Start by observing where you’re consistently hitting friction. What tasks or conversations feel heavy every time they come around? Where are you seeing stagnation or unmet expectations? If you’re an entrepreneur, which services aren’t converting, and which ideas just won’t land with your audience? If you’re in the workplace, where do you feel overlooked, under-resourced, or disconnected from the bigger picture? These aren’t just symptoms of burnout—they’re signals pointing you to misalignment, unclear priorities, or broken systems.
One common pitfall in this season is blaming yourself for everything that’s not working. While self-reflection is key, it’s also important to look systemically. Sometimes the problem isn’t that you’re not working hard enough—it’s that the strategy is outdated, the goal no longer serves your vision, or the environment is unsupportive. Understanding the root cause helps you decide whether something needs to be optimized, delegated, reimagined, or let go entirely.
Don’t be afraid to release what’s not working. Letting go is not a failure—it’s an act of leadership. It creates space for what’s next. It protects your focus. And it clears emotional clutter so you can lead or work from a place of confidence instead of obligation. The best leaders and entrepreneurs don’t cling to dead weight. They adapt, learn, and move forward.
The beauty of an August heat check is that it gives you enough time to turn the page. There are still four months left in the year, plenty of runway to pivot and re-engage. So if you’re looking at something and thinking, “This just isn’t it,” honor that feeling. Trust that clarity, and use it to shape the next chapter with intention.
Concluding Thoughts
At its core, a mid-year heat check isn’t about perfection or productivity—it’s about clarity. It’s about seeing your path, your progress, and your patterns with fresh eyes and grounded honesty. It’s not about shaming yourself for what didn’t happen, but about recommitting to what truly matters. Whether this year has felt expansive or exhausting, the invitation in August is the same: to pause, reflect, and realign with intention.
So often we wait for January to start fresh, but August gives you a beautiful head start. If something is working, build on it. If something’s not, release it. If something is unclear, get curious. There’s power in the pause. There’s strength in the reset. And there’s opportunity in every single adjustment you choose to make now.
As you move through this heat check, be kind to yourself. Growth isn’t linear. Progress isn’t always loud. And alignment doesn’t always look like hustle. Sometimes it looks like clarity, peace, and finally giving yourself permission to change course. Whatever your next step is, may it come from a place of wholeness, not pressure. Because you still have time—not to start over, but to start again, more aligned and more equipped than ever.
