Many Junes ago I was going through a bout of angsty self-pity after a break-up, and a mate of mine told me it might be helpful to start tracking time in terms of financial years, so I could see the upcoming end of the month as a fresh beginning. It was a stupid idea and it totally worked.
Of course, in Australia our EOFY comes bang in the middle of winter, when all anyone wants to do is sleep in and eat hot trans fats like our evolutionarily superior genes tell us to. It’s not a season conducive to fresh starts or revolutionary ideas, more for consolidation and churning out the functional, workaday sausage that fed our piggy banks through autumn.
(Sorry for that twisted metaphor – I’m still thinking about the trans fats.)
There’s a brief flurry of tax-deductible purchasing before June 30, then it’s back to business as usual until spring restores our sense of rebirth, wonder and hayfever, sparking plans for the future… like moving somewhere with a lower pollen count.
But what if you thought of July 1 as more than the date when you reset your accounting software and wonder where you stuffed those business lunch receipts? What if it became a time to take stock of more than just your actual stock – a date to make industrial resolutions that will buoy your thinking for the next six months?
What I’m saying is, we shouldn’t let car salespeople have a monopoly on ‘Happy EOFYS’ ad campaigns. It should be a national holiday on par with New Year’s Eve, where we come together to enjoy each other’s companies in a spirit of renewed meaning and direction, complete with corporate champagne, strategy sausage platters and fireworks at the ATO on the stroke of midnight.
While all those other slackers are holidaying in sunny Europe, we could be getting a jump on the next round of innovation through cross-pollination of ideas, focused across-the-board research on what’s working and what isn’t, and a gift-like exchange of data between seemingly unconnected industries – a sort of bisociated Korporate Kriss Kringle that should never, ever be turned into an acronym.
Best of all, July 1 falls on a Saturday this year so we can sleep in after the grand debauch that rings in the new financial year.
