For me, back to school was always a time of new pencil cases, sparkly pens, and the must-have bag of the moment (always impractical). With my own kids, I do my best to instil excitement rather than dread – who knows what the new school year will bring girls, how exciting! They look blankly at me and tell me to chill.

But this sense of anticipation, the excitement of what might happen, is fantastic (and we no longer have hours of maths to dread, winning!). The back-to-school feeling transcends into positivity and an undeniable energy.

We get used to seeing Q4 as the final few miles in a race we weren’t fit enough for, we’re exhausted and emotionally drained from 9 months of careful persuasion, coming up with new ways to tell our clients’ stories, and faking it till we make it.

But what if we reframed this final quarter as a time for refreshing our creativity and rebooting our personal resilience. If we learn from the previous 9 months and reflect on them constructively, we can use that to great advantage.

It becomes a time of growth and a source of energy that will carry us to the end of the year.  The time when budgets are revised, campaigns are planned, and new work comes into view.  This is the time to be full of enthusiasm and focus: it may be the final miles, but they could be what counts at the end.

Here are 5 low-maintenance ways to feel the back to school energy all year round: 

• Declutter your inbox – ditch the old emails, unsubscribe from the stuff you never read, block out focus times.
• Review your work –  ask some simple questions; how does this work reflect our brand values? Are we proud of this work? What value can we add in the final quarter to maintain momentum?
• Reflect & refresh – thankfully presenteeism is, hopefully, a thing of the past, but still we spend a lot of time at work, be it physically or remotely, and we need to remember to check in on how we feel mentally and physically. What support do you and your teams need to stay happy and healthy?
• Surprise your clients – what can you do to remind clients why they chose you? Going the extra mile with some new thinking, sharing a new favourite source of cultural inspiration, or a good old school tools-down lunch to remind each other of your human qualities (not an actual old school lunch though).
• Show gratitude – at Current Global we do a Thankful Thursday ritual where each of us shares something we’re thankful for that week, over a drink. It’s so simple but it’s effective because we learn about each other, see that we’re ‘more than just work’ and realise we have a great deal that’s good in our lives.

So, get your new pencil case out and those shoes you’d have loved back in the day, and march into September with renewed energy. Have fun!