Ending the Academic Year Strong: Finding Time Confetti and Letting Go of the Guilt

The last quarter of the academic year is here, and with it comes the usual whirlwind—graduations, year-end evaluations, summer vacation plans, and the ominous realization that those goals you set back in July 2024 are still half-finished on your mental to-do list.

Let’s be honest: This is the time of year when we start negotiating with ourselves. “Well, maybe I didn’t actually need to write that paper after all.” Or “Perhaps ‘start a mindfulness practice’ really meant buying a diffuser that one time at Target.”

But before we throw in the towel entirely, let’s talk about how to harness the next three months. Not just to make progress on your goals but to do so in a way that leaves you feeling like a human rather than a self-flagellating failure scratching and clawing through your clinical time until your summer vacation. (Regarding that summer vacation, you have at least one scheduled, right? If not, please stop reading right this minute and get something on the calendar 🫶🏻)

Step One: Identify Your Sticking Points

If you’re feeling behind on your academic goals, the first question to ask yourself isn’t “What can I cram into the next 90 days?” It’s “Why didn’t I make more progress in the first place?”

Not as a self-judgment exercise—burnout thrives on self-recrimination—but as a way of seeing where the friction is. If something consistently slowed you down, it’s worth acknowledging so you don’t repeat the same struggle next year.

- Did charting eat away at your life? If your documentation hours rival your clinical hours, maybe a goal for next year is a meeting with your institution’s EMR super-user to learn efficiency hacks.

- Were you stuck in academic paralysis? If you stared at a blank screen more than you wrote, maybe it’s time to experiment with an AI tool your institution provides to shake loose the writer’s block.

- Did guilt about missed family time weigh you down? If you found yourself constantly feeling torn between work and personal life, next year’s goal could be redesigning your schedule to ensure you’re at the moments that matter most.

- Feel like this life can’t be what you’ve signed up for? Maybe it’s time to find a coach to help you build the life you want as an academic clinician. (Ahem 😉.  Email me at jessie@burningbrightmd.com if you’d like to chat about it.  Seriously, you’ve put too much into this to feel like it’s not what you hoped it would be ❤️)

Step Two: Find Your Time Confetti

Here’s a secret: You have more time than you think. Not in a “hustle culture” way (“Wake up at 4 a.m. and seize the day!”) but in an “unclaimed moments” way.

Time confetti is those bits of unscheduled time that get lost between obligations—the 15 minutes between meetings, the half-hour when a patient is late, the random evening when you’re too tired to start a big project but not quite ready for bed.

- Use your time confetti to knock out small academic tasks: reading a journal article, drafting a rough outline for that paper, brainstorming for a talk.

- Make small-but-mighty progress on personal goals: text a friend you’ve been meaning to catch up with, jot down three things you’re grateful for, or just sit quietly (a radical act in medicine).

Step Three: Prepare for True Rest

Many of us are utterly terrible at vacation. We spend the week before in a frenzied attempt to clear our inboxes, only to collapse into our time off like a marathoner at the finish line. Then, the Sunday before returning, the stress floodgates reopen.

This year, let’s try something different:

- Preempt the post-vacation stress. Block a few hours on your first day back to catch up, rather than schedule yourself into oblivion.

- Actually unplug. Set an out-of-office reply that doesn’t include “But if it’s urgent, you can reach me at…” If you are always reachable, you are never truly off.

- Give yourself a reentry buffer. Plan one low-key day before returning to work—no travel, no errands, just a decompression day.

The Final Thought: Progress, Not Perfection

The goal isn’t to sprint through these last months, wringing productivity from every spare moment. It’s to be intentional. To reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and what you want to change for next year.

Maybe you won’t finish everything you planned back in July. That’s okay. But if you use these next few months wisely—finding your time confetti, learning from this year’s pain points, and setting yourself up for real rest—you’ll end the year with something even more valuable than a checked-off to-do list: the ability to walk into the next one with clarity, purpose, and maybe even a little bit of peace.