If you have been running hard all year and have not yet stopped long enough to feel it, this episode is your invitation to pause.
In this episode of Stay at the Top, I share the exact end of year reflection framework I use personally and professionally to recalibrate before a new season begins. This year has been a completely new chapter for me, navigating early motherhood, returning to work sooner than planned, and operating without the usual rhythms that normally keep me grounded.
Rather than viewing the gaps as failure, I am choosing to view them as data. This episode is an honest reflection on what worked, what did not, and what needs to evolve. I walk you through the Stop, Start, Keep framework and give you real examples from my own life to help prompt your own reflection.
High performance is not full throttle all of the time. The people who sustain success are the ones who pause to review, reflect and recalibrate. This episode is your tool to do exactly that.
In this episode I share:
- Why reflection is a core performance skill, not a soft one
- How the Stop, Start, Keep framework works
- Why pushing harder is not always the answer
- What I am stopping in 2026 and why
- What I am starting again after drifting from it
- The habits I am keeping as non negotiables
- How motherhood reshaped my routines, energy and capacity
- The importance of cadence beyond daily habits
- Why recalibration matters more than reinvention
- How to run your own personal and professional reset
Key Quotes
“High performance is not full throttle all of the time.”
“Reflection sharpens decision making.”
“You do not need reinvention. You need recalibration.”
Episode Resources
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess Spendlove (00:18.432)
If you’ve been running hard all year and you have not yet stopped long enough to feel it, to pause, to reflect, then this episode is that invitation. For me personally, this year has stretched me. It has been a completely new season of life. And I guess because of that, a new season of work. Part of it had me back at work much earlier than I’d planned without much maternity leave at all.
then was also navigating less personal space and less true downtime. While for me, the daily and weekly habits stayed mostly intact in a different way, shape and form, but they were pretty much there. But the bigger cadences, the things like the monthly and the quarterly resets, they were non-existent. I was basically going with the flow and there really wasn’t enough.
of a pause or a downtime. When I look back and when I assess how I’m feeling now, that’s where the gaps were for me. And I can 100 % feel that. I’m not looking at this as failure, I’m looking at it as data. I’m inviting myself to reflect and see what’s worked and see what needs to evolve. And really that’s what the end of the year should be for all of us. And so today I’m going to go through one of my favorite end of season.
or end of year reflection tools, the stop, start, method, and be honest with some of my own reflections. Today is definitely not a highlights reel, but it is an invitation for you to also give yourself the time and give potentially a tool that might resonate with you so that you can also do this exercise. So on that note, let’s get into today’s episode.
Jess Spendlove (02:18.776)
For me personally, I am finishing up work for the year at the end of this week, so that’s why I wanted to make today’s episode a reflection piece. A little bit selfishly, so I was forced to do it for myself, but more so as a dedicated episode to help each of you have a tool that might work or that might resonate.
Now the Stop Start Keep method is something I also covered last year. So if you’ve been listening for a while, you may have heard that episode. And if you haven’t, you may also want to visit that because I go into a lot more detail there. Today’s episode is really an invitation to use the Stop Start Keep method and review the year from both a personal and a professional lens and invite you to do the same. Now it’s really important to understand that
It’s not about just pushing harder. High performance and living your best life is not full throttle all of the time. What high performers really do, and not just high performers, but what I would call elite operators who are people who are able to achieve their goals and sustain that at a pace, what they do is step back and review. This is a really important piece of the puzzle because reflection sharpens the
decision making, is where clues are identified and it’s where we have the space to actually ask the question on what is working for me, what isn’t, what is serving me and what isn’t. Now this ability to reflect, it is not a soft skill, it is a core performance skill and it’s something which you can use in every area of your life.
Jess Spendlove (04:12.62)
Now this is a framework I’ve been using every December for the last, gosh, it’s been a while, probably at least five, maybe six or seven years. I started using this framework in a professional context. It was something which a manager of mine at the Giants, David Joyce, introduced. So we would do a stop, start, keep framework with each of the specialists in the high performance team.
So there’d be like the physios and the dietitians and the strength and power and the conditioning and the analysts, et cetera. We’d sit down at the end of the year and we would go through this as an individual area as well as a team. And this was a tool which I then started using from a personal lens and putting it into my end of year reflection toolkit. So as I’ve mentioned, there’s really three key parts and it is stop, start, keep.
So the questions are really an opportunity to invite you to reflect on, what do you want to keep doing? You know, what’s worked well for you this year and what do you want to keep doing? What do you want to stop doing? What is no longer serving you for whatever reason? And what do you want to stop doing for the sake of just doing it because you think you should or because it’s something that you’ve always done? And also really importantly, what do you want to start doing? Now,
You can really use this framework in any area. And as I go through this, I’m not sharing this as a prescription. This is not a rule book for your life. But these are just a few honest examples from my own stop start keep. And it’s not a complete list. It’s not a comprehensive list. But it’s enough to hopefully prompt your own thinking as you listen. So for me,
I’m going to go through this from both a personal and a professional lens and just give you some examples on some of the things that have made the list for me this year. So up first is stop. So for me, what I’m going to stop doing is blending my work and my milli days. Now this is this year for me was figuring it all out. I was flying by the seat of my pants, if I’m honest, for majority of the year, brand new season of life, new mom.
Jess Spendlove (06:34.038)
I have a business and I wasn’t really sure how that was going to go. So I just did the best that I could. But looking back, this is not how I want to operate. So switching between business owner and present mom in the same day, in the same block costs energy. It costs being present and it also is exhausting. So next year,
these days are going to be more structured. And there’s a few things with that. So first of all, this year I’ve been really grateful for the support and the family help. And then we’ve also had some paid help as well. I’ve been really grateful for that. But this year has really been about fitting in with everybody else’s schedules. Whereas looking ahead for next year, I need to put myself first and think about what do I need?
and what days do I need support based on work commitments? What days do I wanna spend with Millie? And then build that support around that.
Jess Spendlove (07:44.396)
And so there’s been a lot of reflection for me this year on what that is going to look like. And I’m starting to put things into place with that.
The second thing, and I can’t even believe that I’ve been doing this for close to a year and admitting that, and admitting it, is co-sleeping. Now, this was something I said I was never ever going to do. Sleep is one of, if not the most important behavior in my life for so many reasons. For me, when I’m stressed or when I’ve got things going on, sleep is the first thing that goes. And we all know what it feels like when we’re
tired, we’ve got less emotional agility, we’re snappy. And the other thing I believe is when you really dial in to feeling as good as you can, you don’t ever want to stop feeling like that. So for me, sleep was really important. Now the idea of co-sleeping and having the baby in bed with me, like I said, was something I was like, I am never going to do that. At the start for the first three to four months, we had a snoo and it was amazing. I think around like week eight or 10, Millie was sleeping through the night. I was like,
my goodness. This is amazing. I was getting a full night’s sleep. The timing worked really well because I had quite a few important work commitments at that time, a few domestic and international speaking gigs, which I was really concerned about how that was going to go from a mum brain and remembering my lines and getting up on stage and presenting being in a really different kind of space, biologically, physiologically sleep deprived.
But anyway, around that time with the snooze sleeping through the night and that went on for, I don’t know, maybe six or eight weeks. But then like this, overnight, she got over the snooze and we didn’t have a cot at the time and we tried to keep her in the snooze but she just was like, she just had enough honestly in one to two nights. And so I then brought her into bed with me. Now she turns one.
Jess Spendlove (09:54.376)
in two weeks and she has not left the bed with me. The thing I’ve been really interested in is how much I’ve loved it. Part of me or most of me loves it. It’s like so amazing from an emotional connection, the cuddles, the closeness. There’s so much about it that I love but I also understand that having my baby sleeping right next to me, any noise that she makes, I’m waking up.
And the waking up while it comes in seasons, you know, sometimes it’s just a few other times it’s a lot, but even just a few times a night, even that waking up, that disrupts the quality of your sleep. And so for me to get my kind of seven and a half to eight hours of broken sleep, I’m needing to spend an extra one to two hours in bed, which isn’t always possible. And then on top of that, I mean, the broken sleep is just never going to be the same as the
consistent sleep. So this has had wear and tear on me. have been time points throughout the year where I have been absolutely exhausted. And I’ve either needed Millie to go with my partner for a night or two or a little bit more regularly across a few weeks when I’ve had some, again, some important kind of work commitments, or we’ve had to have someone stay over. But the reality is like 90, 95 % of the time she is with me.
and the wear and tear of this is getting real. So across the summer break, this is something that I need to commit to. I need to navigate the few days or few weeks of her resisting the cot, which is in the bedroom. I need to resist it and try and get her into there. So yeah, that is a big focus. That is something I want to stop doing. I know short-term pain, long-term gain.
And then obviously looking at, you know, where we live. So, I mean, I absolutely love where we live. We’re right in the city, but I think the configuration of the apartment, given this new season of life is not ideal. So that’s something that we need to think about as well. you know, moving house and changing lifestyles and all of that isn’t just something that happens overnight. So first things first, let’s move her to the cot.
Jess Spendlove (12:15.544)
Let’s weather the storm of hopefully a few days, not a few weeks of her resisting that and then reassess on the rest of it. So they’re my two stops for 2026. In terms of my starts, so what I’m gonna start doing again is get back to planning my week and in particular when I’m exercising. Now this is something I have always done and
I think part of that this year, obviously new mum, not forcing anything, going with the flow, navigating the back pain that I’ve had, also the poor sleep or the disrupted sleep. There’s so many factors here. The message is not get out and exercise and plan that. If you’re in a new season of being a parent or whatever it is, that is not the message. But for me, I’ve reflected on this year, particularly towards the back end of the year when I have been able to start doing more.
And it’s been really apparent to me that just getting up and going for a walk is not cutting it. It’s not cutting it from a mood point of view. I need to get more intentional movement in. But the other really interesting thing and something that I’ve never really struggled with in this space or not for a long time is procrastination. So even there have been days where I’ve been able to get up and go and go to the gym or swim or they’re the two main things I’m doing at the moment.
I’ve hesitated and this is something I’ve never done before. So again, I’ve been like, okay, what’s going on here? And I haven’t always been having a conversation with my partner on, okay, what days are you doing this and what days am I doing this? And I’m someone who really likes a set schedule where possible. And so we’ve been trying to do that the last few weeks. But then the next part of that for me as well, which I’ve always done is I always put my gear out the night before.
I always put the clothes or the shoes or the swimming gear and I haven’t been doing that and that’s been enough of a block to sit there and hesitate and then go, I’m just gonna go for a walk, which don’t get me wrong, that’s still great. If you’re going for a walk in the morning, that’s fantastic. But for me, I have identified that it has not been enough from a physical component, but more so from a mental component and a mental wellbeing and also a mood point of view.
Jess Spendlove (14:41.804)
What I’m going to start doing or get back to doing is planning my week. This isn’t an everyday thing, but it’s looking at three to four days where I can get a mixture of strength and cardio in that is not just walking, that is likely mainly going to be weights and swimming, maybe running. I’m not a runner and I have had back pain, but I can also appreciate how important it is. So I think I’ll need to do some sort of like couch to 5K.
situation or one minute on one minute off which will kill me. Normally I’m someone who would just get out and go but I also need to appreciate this is not something that I’ve done for a long time and while from a swimming perspective given I used to swim you know my whole childhood and adolescence that is something I can get back into doing more easily and my body is more used to that even though my pecs and my shoulders are screaming while I
Re-adapt to doing some K’s in the pool, especially a 50 meter pool, but yeah the running I need to tread carefully So anyway, that’s my first start and the second one. I’m actually a little bit embarrassed to admit this But for the purpose of this episode and show showing that we’re all human The thing I’m going to start doing next year is cooking on the weekend
Now, as I said, this one is quite humbling, but I have hardly cooked all year. So, few reasons for that. First, the first few months of adjusting to being a mum, like literally there was no time while I was breastfeeding. It was honestly like an hour of feeding, an hour of sleeping, and an hour of just some sort of sanity.
But then that then rolled into, well, that time of night is often bath time and feeding time and wind down time. So I just haven’t been able to prep in the day because I have been working all with Millie and then I miss the window at night because all that’s going on. I’m sure anyone with a child listening to this can relate. And then I don’t really feel like cooking at seven o’clock at night. So a few things have happened here. One, my partner has been doing more cooking.
Jess Spendlove (16:58.944)
Two, we’ve definitely been using more ready-made meals. So I’ve been ordering a bunch of different meal delivery services. The one I was using has just changed facilities and the quality is not what it was. So I’m on the hunt for a new meal delivery service that I recommend just as a gap filler. And then I’m embarrassed to admit, but we have been using Uber Eats more than I would like. Every time I do it, it frustrates me because I’m like the quality.
the expense. I do have to say where I live in the city there is a Guzmani Gomez which is just open like a five minute walk from our house. So that has been the go-to often once or twice a week. I’m currently having a mini burrito bowl with extra chicken and then I add the seasoned corn, lettuce and sometimes some extra vegetables as well. So like it’s a pretty good option in terms of buying something.
But I need to be cooking more and I just, I don’t know what it is. I think I’m in the rut and I’m out of rhythm in doing that. And so after I have a break and a reset across the end of the year, coming up over the next few weeks, that is something I’m going to look at. And getting back to doing more meal prep on the weekend is something I’m going to start doing. I can’t believe I’ve just admitted that, but you know, we’re all friends here.
And then last but certainly not least are the things that I’m going to keep doing. So two of the things that have made my list this year. The first is my Milly days. Now look, business, being a business owner, recording the podcast, speaking, seeing a handful of clients, these all matter to me. But nothing is more important than my time with Milly. So moving into next year, I have zero intention to go back to full time work. There has been a couple of days this
week, sorry, a couple of weeks this year where I have been sucked into doing full-time work and it’s been my own lack of boundaries and I could have said no and every time I’ve done that I have regretted it instantly. So it’s too much work for me for this season of life. What feels like a good sweet spot is three to four days. So this year I’ve kind of had three work days and two milli days and moving into next year I’m likely going to have two half milli days.
Jess Spendlove (19:27.298)
and then the other half days will be split between grandparents or the nanny. But the other thing with that is when people are away, which has happened quite a bit this year, I’m less impacted because Millie will be at a family daycare two days a week. So that’s one of those small four to five people daycares, which I was trying to not put her into a daycare, but this is like a family friend basically.
It’s relatively close. Millie’s quite social, which every time I take her to like a rhyme time or something, she’s crawling off seeing all the other babies. But for me as well, as I mentioned at the start, there is an element of me going, what do I need? And what I need is more consistent structure. And so with that, that delivers me two set days. And then if people are away, I have the capacity to dial that up to a third casual day or ahead of time if I know I can block out that week.
So this is a really important piece of me having my work days and mille days as separate, which is something I really want to work on, but I really want to keep my time with her. So I will at least get two extra half days with her, maybe two full days, depending on what those, what those weeks look like. And my other keep is my weekly unit yoga class. Now I’ve been doing this for like 10 years, not every single week it comes and goes, but most of the time I don’t miss more than a couple of weeks.
at a time and the reason for that is because I feel it. It is so obvious to me mentally when I do not go. Now this is my number one recalibration test. When I go to yin yoga, this is where I get onto the mat and when my mind is able to settle and I’m able to focus on my breathing and the movement and the stretches that we’re holding, I know that
I’m doing all of the things I’m doing, I’m in a good place. But when I get onto that mat and I cannot still my mind and I cannot switch off and what happened to me a few weeks ago, I went to a 90 minute in yoga class and the whole time I sat there going over my keynote topics that I’d nominated for my website, going over my landing pages, I literally didn’t switch my brain off for 90 minutes. Now.
Jess Spendlove (21:48.76)
positive of that was I solved actually a lot of problems which I hadn’t been able to solve for like three or four months. But what was even more obvious to me was like, okay, you are too wound up, you’ve got too many things on the plate because you haven’t been able to come be present. You’ve actually sat here trying to solve problems the whole time. So for me, this is my recalibration test on how I am traveling mentally from a stress point of view and from how many things are on my plate.
And so my question to you is, do you have something that you do weekly that serves as that pulse check? Is it Yin yoga? Is it a breath work class? Is it, I don’t know, something that you do, but that tells you mentally what kind of place that you’re in. And for me, and if you don’t, I would really encourage you to try and find an activity. And if you’ve tried Yin yoga and you’ve hated it, well, maybe that’s the point. Maybe you need to persist with it.
Because I can tell you when I first started doing this practice, I was a go, go, go type of person. I never stopped. So the idea of getting on a mat for 90 minutes and just breathing and holding a position for five minutes, like a pigeon or something very uncomfortable, I hated the idea. But over time I also learned that’s kind of the purpose. And when my mind started to slow and when I started to be able to be present, it was a really…
really eye-opening experience. And like I said, it’s become this anchor point in my life for how things are traveling, how my stress is going, how my overload workload is going, or how everything in my life is being balanced or integrated, or if anything is tilting too far in one direction. And so I guess as I share that, it’s really an invitation for you to think about what you want to start doing, what you want to stop doing, and what you want to keep doing.
and this is the reset or the challenge for you. Take 10, 15, 20 minutes, take yourself out to a cafe, sit with a coffee, go to the park with a journal, whatever that might be, sit there with no phone, no emails, and be present. Write it on a piece of paper, write the three headings, stop, start, keep, and start brain dumping.
Jess Spendlove (24:06.04)
from both a personal sense, a professional sense, and then whatever sits in personal, whether it’s health, relationships, or whether it’s a broader bucket, like something I’ve covered off here. And then ask yourself three questions for each of these. What is costing me more than I realized? What is one habit that you use to anchor me that I have drifted from? And what am I already doing that I cannot afford to lose? So give yourself this space.
you deserve it. This time of year does not require perfection, it requires honesty. And most importantly, you do not need a reinvention, what you need is a recalibration.
So pause it here or stop the episode or come back to it or write those questions down, whatever works for you, but make that time, make that space and see what comes up. Now, I’m also really excited to announce that normally at this point of the year, I would say the show is finishing. I will see you after a four to six to an eight week break, but the show is not stopping over summer. So every week,
from next week so we’re not missing a beat, there will be a short, sharp episode with one tip, one tool or one tactic that is going to help you reset your energy, your habits and your performance for 2026. These episodes are all under the theme reset and they are short, they are sharp, they are practical and they are designed for real life. Now,
If this episode has helped you pause for even a moment, it’s done its job. If there’s anyone that you think would benefit from this episode, please send it to them, whether it’s a link, whether it’s a share, whether it’s a tag. I wanna thank you for tuning in again for another season, another year of Stay At The Top. I’ve got some big things planned with the podcast for next year, which I’ll be excited to let you know when I am back at the start of the year, back into regular programming, but for now.
Jess Spendlove (26:18.496)
Enjoy the Summer Reset Series. Enjoy the time with friends and family.
Jess Spendlove (26:28.428)
can’t wait to be back helping you all not only reach the top, but sustainably stay there. I’ll see you all in 2026.