The Art of Endings: Why These Final 60 Days Will Define Your Entire Year

Dear friend,

Something strange happens every November, doesn't it?

You're moving through October, busy with your projects and your plans, and then one morning you hear it—that first Christmas song drifting through a store or across a café. And suddenly, you're confronted with an unsettling realization: the year is almost over.

For me, it always arrives with a jolt. Not the song itself—though Mariah Carey has become the unofficial herald of year's end—but what the song represents. Time passing. Another year drawing to a close. That uncomfortable question hovering in the air: Did I do what I set out to do?

And then comes the mental arithmetic. The quick calculation of all the things you meant to accomplish. The projects that never quite launched. The habits that faded after February. The goals that seemed so clear in January but now feel like someone else's dreams.

It's tempting, in this moment, to just... let go. To tell yourself that the year is essentially finished, that whatever you didn't accomplish by Halloween is now set in stone, and you might as well coast into the holidays and "start fresh" in January.

I know this temptation intimately. I've surrendered to it more times than I'd like to admit.

But over the years, I've learned something that completely changed how I approach these final weeks. Something rooted in neuroscience that, once you understand it, transforms these last two months from a resigned wind-down into perhaps the most important period of your entire year.

Your brain doesn't remember your year the way you think it does.

And understanding how it actually works—how memory forms, how experience gets encoded, how stories get written in your neural architecture—gives you a kind of superpower over these final sixty days.

Let me show you what I mean.

There's a cognitive psychologist named Daniel Kahneman who won a Nobel Prize for his work on decision-making and memory. Among his many insights, one stands out as particularly relevant to this moment we're in:

We don't remember experiences by their average or their duration. We remember them by their peaks and their endings.

He called it the Peak-End Rule, and it's one of those discoveries that, once you see it, you can't unsee it. It shows up everywhere.

Think about a vacation you took. Maybe it was ten days of beautiful weather, good food, meaningful connection. But then the return flight was a nightmare—delays, lost luggage, stress. What story do you tell about that trip? How do you feel about it when you remember it?

The ending colors everything.

Or think about a relationship. Maybe it was mostly good—years of shared moments, genuine care, real love. But it ended badly. And now, when you think back on it, can you access those good moments purely? Or does the ending cast a shadow over the entire memory?

The ending rewrites the story.

I've watched this play out in my own life more times than I can count. And I see it every time I work with someone at the beginning of a new year. They'll describe the previous year as "terrible" or "a failure" or "a complete waste."

And then we'll actually map it out. Month by month. Project by project. We'll inventory the wins, the growth, the progress made. And often—not always, but often—the year wasn't objectively bad at all. There were victories. There was learning. There were moments of genuine breakthrough.

But something hard happened at the end. November brought a disappointment. December delivered a blow. And that difficult ending overwrote twelve months of experience.

The ending became the story.

I know this pattern because I've lived it. My 2024, for instance, had genuine beauty in it—creative work I'm proud of, relationships that deepened, growth that felt real. But the final quarter got chaotic. Things happened that I didn't ask for and couldn't control. Challenges that arrived uninvited and stayed too long.

And even now, even knowing intellectually about the Peak-End Rule, even recognizing what my brain is doing, I still catch myself summarizing 2024 as "a hard year."

Because my brain is doing exactly what Kahneman said it would: giving disproportionate weight to how things ended.

But here's where this gets interesting—where psychology becomes strategy, where understanding becomes power:

If your brain is going to judge your year by its ending anyway, you might as well make that ending count.

Let me reframe something that might shift how you see this moment:

You don't have "only" two months remaining. You have the two most neurologically significant months of your entire year.

Think about what this actually means.

Everything you do between now and December 31st will carry more weight in your memory than almost any other period this year. Not because those weeks are objectively more important, but because of how your brain processes and stores experience.

Your ending will shape your story.

Which means you have extraordinary influence right now over how you'll remember this entire year. Over the narrative you'll carry forward. Over the momentum (or lack thereof) that you'll bring into 2026.

This isn't pressure—or at least, it doesn't have to be. It's possibility.

Because it means that a strong ending can redeem a difficult year. It means that intentional closure can create coherence out of chaos. It means that these sixty days aren't an epilogue to a story already written—they're the final chapter that gives meaning to everything that came before.

You're still writing this story. The pen is still in your hand.

And the question becomes: What kind of ending do you want to create?

Over the years—through my own stumbling attempts to finish well and through working with dozens of people navigating these transitions—I've come to understand that ending a year with integrity requires five distinct movements.

Not steps, exactly. More like rhythms. Phases. Each one building on the last, each one essential to the whole.

Let me walk you through them.

The first movement is the hardest because it requires something we're not very good at: stopping.

Not stopping as in giving up. Stopping as in pausing. Creating space. Allowing yourself to step out of the momentum and ask a question that requires real stillness to answer:

What actually matters?

When you only have sixty days, you cannot afford to scatter. You cannot chase every idea, pursue every opportunity, finish every project. There isn't time. There isn't energy.

Clarity is the first act of freedom.

So before anything else, you need to answer three questions. Write them down. Sit with them. Be honest.

First: What do I need to finish?

Not everything on your list. Not every project you started. Just the one or two things that matter most. The things that, if completed, would let you look back on this year with genuine satisfaction.

What has a real deadline? What can actually be completed? What would you be proud of?

Second: What do I need to initiate?

These are your seeds for next year. The conversations you need to start. The relationships you want to begin building. The projects you want to set in motion—not to complete now, but to position for growth later.

You won't see the harvest this season. But you're planting with intention for the spring.

Third: What do I need to release?

This is often the hardest question and the most important.

What collaborations have run their course? What commitments are draining more than they're giving? What needs to end so something else can begin?

We're in autumn. The trees are teaching us something essential: Sometimes you have to let go to survive.

For me this year, this meant some difficult conversations. Collaborations that weren't wrong, just no longer aligned. Projects that had momentum but not meaning. Things I needed to stop so I could focus on what actually mattered.

And it meant choosing one primary project to complete before year's end—something I can't fully talk about yet, but something that feels essential to finish. Not perfectly. Just... done.

That's what clarity creates: the ability to say yes to what matters and no to everything else.

Here's something I've learned about the human brain: it struggles with abstract time but thrives with concrete structure.

"Two months" is abstract. It floats. It feels both urgent and distant simultaneously.

But November 4th through December 31st? That's real. That's mappable.

So here's what I want you to do:

Get paper. Actual paper. And draw or print two months—November and December—side by side.

Make them big enough to write on. Make them visible enough to see from across the room.

Now fill them in:

This simple act—externalizing your time—does something remarkable: it transforms anxiety into agency.

When time lives only in your head, it breeds worry. When time lives on paper in front of you, it becomes something you can work with, shape, design.

Every time I guide someone through this exercise, they resist at first. "I already know what I need to do. I don't need to write it down."

And every time, they come back afterward with the same response: "That lifted so much weight. I can see everything now. My mind feels quieter."

Because your mind is for having ideas, not for holding calendars.

This is where most people sabotage their own ending.

They look at those two months mapped out on paper. They see what they want to accomplish. And they make a fatal decision: to push harder. Work longer. Sacrifice more. Sprint to the finish line.

And then they arrive at the holidays depleted, often sick, having accomplished less than if they'd simply found a sustainable pace.

Intensity matters. But sustainable intensity beats unsustainable sprinting every time.

This is especially true now, in late autumn. If you're in a place with seasons, your body knows something your mind might be ignoring: the days are shorter, the air is colder, your energy is different than it was in June.

You're not a machine that operates at constant capacity year-round. You're a biological being responding to seasonal rhythms whether you acknowledge them or not.

So instead of asking "How much can I do?", ask: "What rhythm will let me finish strong without breaking?"

For me, this means:

I'm in deep focus mode, yes. But it's rhythmic focus, not relentless grinding. I work intensely, then I recover completely. I engage fully, then I step back to regain perspective.

The goal isn't to match someone else's pace. It's to honor your actual energy while still moving toward what matters.

Find your rhythm. Not the one you think you should have. The one that actually works for you, right now, in this season, with the energy you actually possess.

Once you've clarified what matters, mapped your time, and established your rhythm, you need to do something that will feel both liberating and difficult:

You need to eliminate everything else.

This is what I call immersion mode—and it's not about working more hours or being more productive. It's about protecting what you've decided matters from the thousand small things that will try to pull you away.

Every new idea that emerges? Beautiful. Write it down for January.
Every opportunity that appears? Lovely. Evaluate it against your stated intention.
Every shiny possibility that catches your eye? Acknowledge it. Then let it pass.

This isn't rigidity. It's integrity.

You already made the hard decisions about what deserves your focus. Now you need the courage to actually focus on it.

I know this is especially challenging for those of us with multiple interests, with curiosity that pulls in many directions, with minds that see connections everywhere. We're wired to explore, to pursue tangents, to follow threads.

But sometimes, focus is a form of devotion.

Devotion to your future self who will inherit what you finish.
Devotion to the work that deserves your full attention.
Devotion to the life you're building that sometimes requires choosing one path over many.

You're not abandoning your multiplicity. You're channeling it toward one thing for one season.

There's a profound difference between focus and limitation. Focus creates depth. Limitation creates constraint.

Choose depth.

Before we talk about what's ahead, we need to pause and acknowledge what's already happened.

Remember the Peak-End Rule? It's not just about endings. It's about peaks too—the high points and low points that your brain has already marked as significant.

You need to see them clearly before you can finish well.

So take time—real time, not rushed time—to look back at this year with compassionate eyes:

What were your peaks?

The moments that made you feel alive. The wins that mattered. The connections that deepened. The growth that happened when you weren't even looking.

Write them down. See them. Let yourself feel the gratitude for what was beautiful.

What were your valleys?

The moments that challenged you. The losses that hurt. The failures that stung. The situations that tested everything you thought you knew about yourself.

See those too. Not with judgment—with compassion.

You survived them. You're still here. You kept going even when it was hard. That itself is worth honoring.

And here's what I want you to understand: A year with only peaks would be fantasy, not life. The valleys are part of the story. The struggles are part of the growth. The difficulty is part of what makes the beauty meaningful.

You don't need to judge your year as "good" or "bad." You need to see it as fully human—containing both light and shadow, both victory and grief.

Honor all of it. The achievements and the disappointments. The progress and the setbacks. The moments you're proud of and the moments you wish you'd handled differently.

Because you're not trying to create a perfect year. You're trying to create a complete one.

And completion requires acknowledging what actually was, not what you wished had been.

So now we arrive at the essential question—the one that only you can answer:

What would it mean for you to finish this year well?

Not perfectly. Not having checked every box or achieved every goal. Not having magically solved every problem or healed every wound.

Just... well.

In a way that feels true. In a way that honors your effort. In a way that lets you step into 2026 with momentum rather than exhaustion, with clarity rather than confusion, with self-respect rather than regret.

I can't tell you what that looks like for you. But I can tell you what I've learned about endings that feel complete:

They're not about perfection. They're about integrity.

The years I remember most fondly aren't the ones where everything went according to plan. They're the ones where I kept my promises to myself about what mattered.

Where I stayed true to my values even when it was inconvenient.
Where I chose meaning over momentum.
Where I honored both my ambition and my limits.
Where I finished what I said I would finish, or consciously chose to release it.

That's what creates a strong ending. Not achievement for achievement's sake. Alignment between intention and action.

You have sixty days.

Sixty days to shape how you'll remember this entire year.
Sixty days to create the momentum that will carry you forward.
Sixty days to discover what you're capable of when you focus on what truly matters.

This isn't about pressure. It's not about cramming in more tasks or manufacturing some artificial sense of completion.

It's about consciousness. About choosing. About recognizing that you're still writing this story.

The ending hasn't been written yet. You still have the pen.

So before you close this and return to your day, I want to leave you with one question to carry with you:

What needs to happen in these next sixty days for you to look back on 2025 with genuine peace?

Not satisfaction in the sense of having achieved some external standard.
Not pride based on others' approval or recognition.

But peace. The kind that comes from knowing you were true to yourself. That you honored what mattered. That you finished with integrity.

That answer—wherever it leads you—is your compass for these final weeks.

Everything else is distraction.

If you want to begin this work right now, here's where to start:

Take out a piece of paper. Write these three questions at the top:

Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Write without stopping. Don't edit, don't judge, just write.

Let whatever comes up come up. The obvious things and the surprising things. The practical and the emotional. The things you've been avoiding and the things you've been carrying.

When the timer ends, read what you wrote. Circle the three things that feel most true, most important, most aligned with who you actually are right now.

Those three things are your map for these sixty days.

Not everything on your list. Not all your ambitions or obligations. Just those three.

Start there. See where they lead you.

You might be wondering what my own ending looks like—what I'm actually focusing on in these final weeks.

I'll be honest: there's one project I can't talk about publicly yet that feels essential to complete. Not because it needs to be perfect, but because it needs to exist. Because finishing it would make this year feel complete in a way nothing else could.

I'm also planting seeds for 2026—conversations I'm having now that will bloom later, relationships I'm nurturing that will bear fruit in the spring. Business development that's moving slowly but moving right.

And I've made some difficult decisions about what to release. Collaborations that were good but no longer aligned. Projects that had momentum but lost meaning. Things I needed to let go to make space for what matters most.

It's not a dramatic ending. It's not a Hollywood finish.

It's just intentional. And that's enough.

Until next time,

Johann

P.S. — I'm genuinely curious: What's the one thing you need to finish, initiate, or release to make this ending feel true? Hit reply and tell me. I read everything, and your reflections often spark insights that benefit us all.

Early November: Clarity

Mid November: Structure

Late November - Mid December: Execution

Late December: Integration

Daily Practice:

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