Hustle Sanely
If you constantly feel spread too thin, your mind is always running through what needs to get done next, and you’re running on fumes by the time you get to the people you love...you're in the right place!
Welcome to Hustle Sanely — a podcast about slowing down, letting go of the pressure to do it all, and making more room for what matters most. We're breaking up with hustle culture and building peacefully productive lives so we can pursue our goals without sacrificing our well-being.
I’m Jess Massey, a recovering workaholic who spent most of my 20s neglecting rest, hobbies, friendships, and other important parts of life in the name of achieving my goals. Hustle culture told me that was the way to succeed, and it eventually left me burned out with a life that looked good on paper but left me feeling unfulfilled (and rly, rly exhausted, lol).
What started as my own journey out of burnout became a calling to help women steward their time and energy well, build routines that reflect their actual priorities, and create a life that feels as good as it looks.
Around here, we talk about:
🕊️ Peaceful productivity + intentional living: Practical tips for planning your time, honoring your capacity, creating sustainable routines, and making progress without running yourself into the ground
🧸 Mindful motherhood: Honest conversations about motherhood, family rhythms, being present, and creating a home life that reflects what matters most to you
📖 Books, life, and whatever else is on my mind: Because personal growth doesn't have to be so serious and I always want to leave room for good conversations, curiosity, and the occasional tangent
New episodes air every other Tuesday, so grab your coffee, settle in, and let's figure out how to build a life that supports the things we actually care about.
Hustle Sanely
318: Not Hitting Your 2026 Goals? Do This 4-Step Mid-Year Reset
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We are over halfway through 2026, which honestly feels a little unreal...like, where did the first six months of the year go? 😅 This time of year can bring up a kind of low-key panic. You set all these intentions in January, you had your little vision board moment, you were ready...and now it's July and maybe things look a little different than you planned.
In this episode, we cover:
- My 4-step mid-year reset process so that you can show up well for the rest of 2026 (even if that means throwing all of your January goals out the window)
| RESOURCES |
Y'all, we are over halfway through 2026, which honestly feels a little unreal. Like, where did the first six months of the year go? And I know for a lot of you, this time of year can bring up kind of like a low-key panic. You set all of these grand, amazing intentions in January. You had your little vision board moment, you were ready. Now it's July, and maybe things look a little bit different than you planned. I personally love a mid-year reset moment. Maybe it's because I'm really type A, or maybe it's because now that I'm older, I understand that life is always gonna be lifing. And so we owe it to ourselves to take a beat mid-year to make sure that how we're living and what we're pursuing makes sense for how the first half of the year is unfolded. Because sometimes things that are out of our control happen and they really do affect how the rest of the year go, right? So the cool thing to me about a mid-year check-in is we still have five to six months left to make this year absolutely amazing, right? The year is halfway over, but it's not over. We still have half of a year. You have so much time left to make some really cool stuff happen, the rest of 2026. Today we are gonna go through my four-step mid-year reset process. And for my fellow girls who love alliteration, all four steps start with the letter R, you're welcome. It made my Taipei heart so happy. But anyway, welcome or welcome back to the Hustle Stanley podcast. I hope you're taking care of yourself. This is your digital classroom for learning how to break up with burnout and build a peacefully productive life. So if you're tired of feeling like you're running on E and you're just stretched so thin, grab your notebook and let's get to class. The bell is rung, so let's learn today's lesson together. I actually first talked about this framework on the show way back in 2021, which how crazy that that was five years ago. How crazy that I was podcasting five years ago, but I wanted to run it back because I honestly feel like now that I'm a mom, I view things through a different lens, obviously, right? And so I wanted us to revisit this mid-year reset framework together through a new life perspective. You know what I mean? Like we talked about, life is constantly throwing us curveballs and expecting us to just keep performing at full speed, but absolutely not. No, ma'am, we do not do that around here because that is how we end up hustling insanely. And obviously, here at Hustle Sanely, that is not the vibe. When your life changes, you've gotta pause and readjust based on your new season, like what's going on right now. So, anyways, okay, let's get into our four-step mid-year reset for when life feels a little bit all over the place. So, step one is to revisit your goals, but here's the catch as the July version of you. So I would be willing to bet that your life does not look the same as it did back in November, December, or January when you set some of your 2026 goals. Listen, mine doesn't either. All right. Like we've had some changes. I actually talked all about them in the last podcast episode that went up. And I don't feel a single bit bad about editing my goals based on my life right now. That doesn't make me flaky or a failure. It makes me flexible and growth-minded. I want you to actually go back, like physically pull up whatever you wrote down in January or whenever you wrote up your 2026 goals, whether it's your planner, your notes app, your notion, your vision board, your winter study hall workbook, wherever you put those goals and intentions, pull them up. Like get them in front of you. Read over each goal that you set and ask yourself these questions. You ready? First one, does this goal still matter to me? Does this goal still matter to me? And then the next question that I want you to ask: does this goal still make sense for my life? If you answer no to either of these questions for any of your goals, get rid of it. Period. Let it go. This is gonna help you weed out goals that are robbing you of your mental energy because you're thinking about how you said you wanted to do XYZ goal, but you haven't yet. I know in the past I've set goals that sounded good or that looked good on someone else's vision board, but when it came down to it, it didn't actually align with the vision that I have for my life, right? Like this is your moment to get real about which goals are yours and which ones are just noise that you picked up somewhere along the way. Doing this is going to lighten your mental load and also it's gonna get you excited to pursue fewer, more you aligned goals. You know what I'm saying? So that is step number one, revisiting your 2026 goals as the July version of you to make sure you still care about them. Step two is to realize where you're currently at. Y'all know I am so big on talking about life seasons, and that's because our season of life affects literally everything, okay? It affects our priorities, our capacity, our schedules. Step one was all about ditching goals that no longer make sense for you and your season. And this step is all about writing in some new goals that support said current season. But, but there is a but. Let's take a collective pause here. I am not telling you to come up with a new goal to replace the exact number of goals that you may have ditched in step one. We've got some recovering perfectionists here in the Hustle Saint community, me, I am one. So I feel like I have to say this, okay? The purpose of goals isn't to just rack them up and cram in as many as possible every year. There is not some magic number of goals that you need to pursue. One year you might have 14 goals, and the next year you might have four. Neither circumstance is better than the other. The important thing is to be pursuing goals that make sense for you and your season of life. I know that we love a concrete example. So when I say this is a time to adopt some new goals that might feel supportive for the last six months of the year, this is what I mean. Maybe you've realized that your sleep hygiene has been actual trash for the last three months. So you're really wanting to focus on coming up with and sticking to an evening routine that promotes healthy sleep habits. Maybe your kid unexpectedly started preschool. Me, that would be me. And now you have a little bit more margin in your days and you want to use some of your new white space to plant a garden. I don't know. I did not start a garden, but that example just popped in my head. Maybe you got a bonus at work and you want to put some of it toward a house project that you can afford now. And let me also just say you might not need to write any new goals for the rest of the year. And that is perfectly fine too. Even if you got rid of some goals, don't feel like you have to add on new goals. But if there are some things that changed in your life and you feel like some new goals would be supportive, add them in. Step three is to revise your priorities, aka decide what needs your attention. So in step one, we got rid of the goals that did not make sense for us anymore. In step two, we adopted new goals that support our current season. And now for step three, we're essentially doing a life audit, if you will. We're figuring out what your priorities need to be so that you show up how you want to for the rest of 2026. So, real quick, let's make sure that we're all on the same page about how we're defining what a priority is. Because I feel like it's one of those words that you hear so often that the meaning kind of gets watered down. So when I say priority, I mean something that is very important and must be dealt with before other things. Okay. So I feel like this is the hardest step. Sorry, because it forces us to get real with ourselves. We have to be honest about how we're currently spending our time because we can't just create more time, right? Like none of us can do that. We have to adjust and reallocate how we're spending our time so that what actually matters to us is being taken care of instead of being pushed to the back burner. So, with your updated 2026 goals in front of you, I want you to look at each one and ask yourself what has to be true in my daily life for this goal to actually happen. Not what would be nice or what works in theory, but like what actually needs to be true. We do this all the time where we set a goal and we're genuinely excited about it, but we never stop to figure out what that goal actually requires from us. And then we wonder why we're not making progress. Hello? Nine times out of 10, it's not a motivation problem, it's a priorities problem. And I'm speaking from the experience of working with thousands of women on goal setting, right? So, example, if one of your goals is to be more present with your kids this fall, what does that actually require? Maybe it means you have a hard stop time when it comes to work at 4 p.m. Or your phone goes in a drawer during dinner, or you stop saying yes to things that pull you away from your family on weekends for this season. I want you to go through each goal and write down one to three things each one requires from you and get specific here. The more specific that you get, the easier it's gonna be for you to follow through with these action steps to like actually make your goal happen. And that brings us to step number four, which is revamp your schedule and routines. Okay, y'all know I'm gonna say this, but I'm gonna say anyway. Your schedule and routines are tools, not chains. They are not set in stone. They are not meant to be this rigid, perfect system that you feel like a failure for not following perfectly. They are meant to bring ease and flow into your life, okay? They are meant to help you actually live the life that you want to be living. So in step one, we got rid of the goals that don't make sense for us anymore. In step two, we added in new goals that feel supportive for where we're at right now. In step three, we decided what needs our attention now based on our updated goals, aka our priorities. And in step four, we're revising our day-to-day schedule and weekly rhythms so that our priorities are getting our best time and energy and not just like the crumbs of what's left over at the end of the week. I'm a big fan of having a weekly outline. It's basically a blueprint of what a typical week in your life looks like. It's such a helpful tool to see how much margin you have or don't have in your week and where it's actually at. If you've been hustling sanely and living a peacefully productive life for a while, you probably already have a weekly outline. There's a page every quarter in our peacefully productive planners for you to make a new one because as the seasons change, sometimes our weeks change too, you know? But if you don't have one, you can make a weekly outline using these three easy steps. Step one is plug in your scheduled responsibilities in a typical week. So think about things like work hours, classes, church meetings, kids' practices, like things you know are recurring week to week. Step number two is plug in your non-negotiable responsibilities in any supporting habits. So think about things like workouts, family walks, weekly date nights, like that kind of a thing. Step number three is plug in any other typical weekly routine. So things like your morning routine, your evening routine, your weekly prep meeting, your home reset routines, like those kinds of things. I have a free workshop called the ChaosCom Workshop where I walk you through this process in detail and you even get like a cutie little template to build your own weekly outline. I will link the workshop for you in the show notes or the description box. It really is free, like there's no catch. Anyway, pull out your weekly outline and ask yourself these questions. Are there any commitments that I need to step away from in this season to create more space? Is there anything I can delegate to lighten my load? This could be in your business, in your home, anywhere. You don't have to do all the things. You can't do all the things, okay? The next question: Do my routines and habits still support my vision or do they need tweaking? So the morning routine that worked when you didn't have a toddler might need some updating. Okay, I'm just saying. And then finally, ask yourself, can I make any shifts in my schedule that better align with my actual energy? So, like maybe instead of working out in the evenings, because after work, you're just like, bro, that is the last thing I want to do. You decide, okay, I'm actually for this season gonna try waking up earlier in the morning, getting my workout done before work so that I can spend time with my family in the evening. You know what I mean? So, like honoring your actual energy. So once you've got your updated weekly outline, figure out where you can plug in your priorities from step three. Okay. So not every single priority is gonna need like a designated space on your weekly outline. Like if one of your priorities is a phone-free dinner, you don't have to schedule that in. You just do have it when it's dinner time, right? But if one of your priorities is clocking out of work by 4 p.m. every day, that should be on your weekly outline, right? Like with your work hours. And there you have it, y'all. Your four-step mid-year reset. My hope is that this mid-year reset gives you permission to come face to face with where you are right now, own what's working, release what isn't, and head into the second half of 2026 feeling way more intentional and a whole lot less scattered. And that wraps up today's lesson. But y'all, what good is learning something if we don't apply it to our lives? We are all about taking action here in the Hustle Stanley classroom. It is time for me to assign your homework for the week so that you can actually create a peacefully productive life. So this week's homework, aka what I want you to do before the next episode. And I mean, hello, you already know what I'm gonna tell you to do, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. I want you to schedule an hour-long date with yourself at a cute little coffee shop or cafe to sit down with your peacefully productive planner and Google Calendar to work through these four steps. Buy a yummy coffee and a sweet treat and set yourself up at a table at your favorite local coffee shop and get to intentionally planning the rest of 2026, my gal. Which by the way, by the way, our 2026 planners are marked down to $25. $25. We have never done this before. I don't know what came over me when I went into Shopify and did the markdown. We usually mark them down 50%, which would be like 30 bucks, but I was like, you know what? We're gonna do 25. So if you need to grab one to help you do your mid-year reset, this is truly the perfect time to do it. And also, it's a really good time to give our planning system a test run before our 2027 planners drop in September. I'm just saying, I'm just saying. I will, of course, link our 2026 planners for y'all. Okay, class is officially dismissed. It is time for some extra credit, aka me filling you in on all the things happening in the Hustle Single community right now. First and foremost, we gotta talk about some peacefully productive planner updates. So I already told y'all our 2026 weekly planners are $25. And speaking of planners, we are working away on the 2027 collection. It is launching in September, just like it does every year. But we are doing things a little bit differently this year. So lean in. Okay, do not tune me out right now. The only opportunity for early shopping is happening inside Hustle Stanley Study Hall. So if you're a member of Study Hall, you'll be able to shop early. And then after everyone in Study Hall finishes shopping, we're gonna be opening up shopping to the public. We sent out a transparent email a few weeks ago letting y'all know that due to rising costs of our products, so like what we're paying on the back end, we ordered half of the inventory that we normally do. AKA, things are gonna be limited. I know that we said that last year, but we have it again. So, y'all running a small product-based business in 2026 is no joke. Like, it is no joke. So, we do have two new products dropping with the 2027 collection. So, make sure you're following over on Instagram at Jess M. Massey and at Hustle Sainley. So, you can be the first to see some little sneaky peekies once our samples are finalized. Which, speaking of email, if you are not already on our email list, you gotta get on there, Bestie. Like you really do. We send out a weekly email every single Saturday called Slow Down Saturday. You guys have been responding to our weekly emails with such kind words. So thank you. I'm so glad that you guys enjoy our slowdown Saturday emails. But inside of them, we share peaceful productivity inspiration and we also fill you in on all the things that are happening in the Hustle Stanley community. The link to get Hustle Stanley emails will also be in the show notes andor description box. Thank y'all so much for coming to class with me today. I will talk to you in the next episode. I love you so much, and I hope you have the best day ever.