Engineering, psychology, and common sense all agree: checking things early costs less than fixing them late, both at work and in life. The last four months of the year are the time to detect signs of wear and tear before they become urgent
SANTO DOMINGO – The month of September marks, almost imperceptibly, the beginning of a different season. Deadlines pile up, schedules fill up, and amidst deadlines and assessments, a question arises that is rarely asked calmly: how close or how far are we from what we set out to achieve in January?
That question, both personal and business-related, has an exact equivalent in engineering, a discipline that for decades has solved a dilemma similar to that of any person who reaches this stage of the year without knowing where to start reviewing themselves.
In structural maintenance, a building is not only evaluated when something goes wrong, but also on scheduled dates, before wear and tear leads to breakdowns. Engineer Luis Alvarado, a specialist in metal structures, explains that the lack of periodic inspections can compromise the integrity of a building and result in costly repairs or even catastrophic failures.
The logic behind this practice is simple: checking on time costs less than repairing late, and it applies equally well to a person, a team, or a company that goes through the last quarter of the year without having stopped to look at the actual state of their work columns.
On the emotional side, psychologist Christina Maslach, a pioneer in the study of burnout syndrome, has documented that it accumulates as a prolonged response to sustained stress at work, and not as a sudden event.
The last quarter, full of closings, deliveries and year-end commitments, usually concentrates a good part of that tension, so recognizing signs of fatigue before they set in is, in practice, the same principle that guides a structural inspection, detecting wear and tear while you can still intervene without urgency.
In terms of goals, goal-setting theory, developed by psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, argues that specific and challenging goals better sustain motivation and performance than vaguely formulated ones.
Taken to the October review, this means that the useful question is not only whether a goal was met or not, but whether that goal was set with sufficient clarity to be measurable.
A year-end review that is limited to a yes or no rarely teaches anything, while one that reviews the original accuracy of the objective leaves concrete material to better design the next cycle.
That next cycle, however, has its own pitfall. Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky described the so-called planning fallacy, the systematic tendency to underestimate the time, cost, and risks of a future project while overestimating its benefits. Kahneman documented this bias in infrastructure projects that are completed years late and over budget, as well as in the everyday tasks of any individual or organization.
Designing next year from pure enthusiasm, without looking at how many pending issues from this year remain open, runs the risk of repeating the same optimism that has already failed before.
Entering the final semester with this perspective implies, therefore, several concrete tasks:
- Evaluate the actual progress toward the year's goals, not the perception of them.
- Pay attention to early signs of burnout, both your own and your team's, before they become more difficult to reverse.
- And start outlining next year based on what actually happened this year, not just on what we wish would happen.
No structure, be it a building, a team, or a personal project, is sustained solely by goodwill. It is sustained because someone, at the right moment, took the time to examine it.
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