When “Just Get Through the Year” Becomes the Strategy

Somewhere around late Q3, a quiet shift happens in a lot of marketing teams. Strategy conversations start sounding less like vision and more like survival. The goal stops being growth or innovation and becomes something simpler: just get through the year.

On paper, that mindset makes sense. Budgets are tight. Bandwidth is thinner. Everyone is tired. There’s pressure to finish strong without rocking the boat. So marketing turns into maintenance mode. Keep posting. Keep sending. Keep reporting. Keep everything moving until January.

The problem is that “just get through it” has a way of overstaying its welcome.

When survival becomes the default posture, creativity shrinks. Risk disappears. Thoughtful experimentation gets replaced with safe execution. And before you realize it, marketing becomes a loop of doing what’s expected instead of doing what’s effective.

This isn’t because marketers don’t care. It’s because the system rewards endurance more than intention. If you keep delivering, keep shipping, keep responding, the assumption is that things are working well enough. No one stops to ask whether the work is actually aligned, differentiated, or worth the effort it takes to sustain it.

By the time December rolls around, that misalignment shows up as exhaustion without a clear source. You didn’t necessarily fail; you just spent months reacting instead of choosing.

What’s tricky is that this mode often gets praised. Being able to “handle everything,” “keep things running,” or “power through” is framed as professionalism. But long-term, it trains teams and leaders to equate resilience with silence and adaptability with overextension.

The end of the year is often the first moment marketers have permission to question that dynamic.

What would have happened if fewer things shipped, but with more intention? What work actually moved the brand forward, and what simply filled space? What decisions were made out of urgency instead of clarity?

These aren’t criticisms. They’re calibrations.

Because going into a new year without examining the habit of “just getting through it” guarantees the same pattern will repeat, just with a new calendar and a fresh set of expectations.

Marketing doesn’t need more stamina. It needs more selectivity.

And December, for all its weird limbo energy, is the rare window where that kind of honest assessment is possible (if you let it be.)