The mid-year check-in: six questions to ask yourself in July
It’s July, which means we’re past the halfway mark of 2026 — a fact I find slightly alarming every single year.
It also means this is the perfect moment for a mid-year check-in. If you set yourself goals in January — a list, a plan, a vague promise to yourself — now is a good time to have an honest look at them: what’s going well, what needs a rethink, and what deserves to be ditched entirely. That last one is allowed, by the way. A goals list is a working document, not a contract.
Why check in at all?
Because January-you made that list with January information. Six months of actual life have happened since: things have shifted, priorities have revealed themselves, and some goals that mattered in the winter simply don’t anymore. Pushing on with a stale list isn’t discipline — it’s clutter. And unexamined goals have a way of quietly becoming sticks to beat yourself with.
A mid-year review isn’t about grading yourself. It’s about making sure the list still describes a year you actually want.
How I did mine
I started January with goals for work and for life, plus a digital mood board set as the home screen on my laptop and phone — my brain works visually, and I’d rather see the year I’m aiming for than file it in a drawer. I checked in on it all in April, moved some things around, and I’ve just done it again for the halfway point.
For the July review I gave myself dedicated thinking time: a lunchtime walk, having read through the lists before I left so they were fresh in my head. I do my best thinking out of the house, walking — something about movement gets thoughts flowing, and it helps that my inbox and the washing pile can’t follow me round the park.
The six questions
These are the actual questions I worked through. Feel free to use them or adapt them to suit you!
What’s working — what’s on track for where I want to get to this year? Name it properly, and let yourself enjoy it. (For me: I’m on track for the next level of ICF accreditation this autumn.)
Do I have everything in place to keep that going? Momentum needs maintenance. (Mine surfaced a job: book the ICF exam for September.)
What isn’t working, or isn’t on track? No judgement yet — just an honest list.
Of those, what still matters and needs a better approach? Some goals fail because the approach was wrong, not the goal. (My step count is down on 2025 — the goal stays, the method changes: more thinking walks.)
What can be ditched? Better to admit this isn’t the year for some things than to let them clutter the list — and your head. Deciding not to do something is a decision, and it frees up more than diary space.
What’s new that needs to go on there? You’re allowed to add things in July. The year isn’t finished with you yet.
What to do with the answers
Capture them somehow - a voicenote to yourself or just write them down — the thinking evaporates otherwise. I wrote mine up when I got home (after a detour in which I lost, then found, my keys in the park; new goal: stop losing things) and put time in the diary to refresh the mood board to match. The whole exercise is a mental tidy-up, and it feels as good as the physical kind.
If the list turns out to be the small thing
One honest caveat. Sometimes a mid-year check-in surfaces something bigger than a goal that needs rescheduling — a growing sense that the job, the plan, or the whole shape of things no longer fits. If that’s what your list is telling you, that’s worth proper attention, not a bullet point. An hour of focused
coaching — a Power Hour — is built for exactly that kind of question. And if it’s something bigger than a list, that’s what 1-1 coaching is for.
Have you checked in on your goals for 2026 yet? If you didn’t set any in January, it’s genuinely not too late — a list started in July still gets half a year.