Planning for 2023
Oohh I love to plan! I probably spend way too long writing lists and planning my work and life but I’m sure if I didn’t do that I wouldn’t get half as much done as I do. I’m not too great at sticking to my plans but I definitely need that big picture clarity at the start of the year. My biggest problem is writing lists that are too long and having goals with very short deadlines. (This is especially daft as a new mum). So something I’m working on this year is adapting, preparation and lots of flexibility.
It’s also important to remember that planning isn’t doing, goals can change, and it’s ok if we get behind - especially during January when we try to get everything for the new year completed and what we really should be doing is resting.
Anyway, this is just a short blog to share how I like to plan these days after many years of searching special productivity formulas on Pinterest, being a multi-passionate balancing various jobs and hobbies, making my own bullet journal, a customised filofax and always having way too many ideas.
planning the year with a simple intention
As a year is a long time I like to keep things simple with a Word of the Year. I still write down lots of goals and plans that I’d like to achieve but my list is often too long and ambitious! A word of the year helps to keep some consistency when some of my goals change and is also helpful when making decisions. I can ask myself: does this work well with my word of the year?
My word of the year for 2023 is balance. I want to balance being a mum and a wife; my work and play; being inside and outside; rest and productivity… I tend to obsess over my art business and I’ll only do activities that relate directly to it including the books I read. It’d be nice to have permission to read some fiction or to be able to work on some creative crafts that have no end goal!
setting goals & working in line with the seasons
If you follow me on Instagram or read my other blogs you’ll know I love delving into a bit of seasonal and cyclical living! It just makes so much sense to follow the ebbs and flows of our bodies along with nature’s cycles. (When we can, of course).
Instead of just thinking of the four seasons and planning strict and rigorous routines, I like to think of times when I should be doing more or less. For example, spring and autumn are the seasons when we get a burst of energy and tend to work harder; summer is a time of calm after the hard work in spring; and winter is a time when our bodies need more sleep, rest and warmth. For product-based small businesses, I’ve given Christmas and December its own section as you can’t really rest until the new year!
Set some loose goals for each season and think about periods when you want to work on them.
WINTEr
I class winter as January and February (post-Christmas) and it is a short period of around 6 weeks of work. It’s a time to plan, get a vision and experiment as well as a time to play and rest as much as possible. No multi-tasking here. Winter is all about simplicity and single-focussed activities. Try to make as much space as possible in your working and living environment.
SPRING
Spring is where our energy levels increase the most. Spending time outside boosts our energy levels even more and the days are of course a lot longer. I count spring as March, April and May. This is a long 12-week plan for me and it is a time for creativity, ideas, multi-tasking and lots of driving action. We’ve just got to be careful it doesn’t become a time of procrastination and getting distracted with shiny new ideas which is a typical spring-like thing to do.
SUMMER
When days are too hot, I think this should be a time for basking in the sun, reading a good book and glancing over at all our hard work in spring. Summer is a time for celebration, calm and “graceful productivity”. I’m hoping to have August off this year and work mostly in June and July. I find it very hard to switch off so I’m planning to start illustrating a children’s picture book in August that my husband and I have written. As this won’t relate to my art shop in any way I should find it refreshingly fun. I’ll make sure this is the month I read fiction and find time to relax as well.
AUTUMn
September is that back-to-school feeling when you’re desperate for a routine again after the lazy days of summer. Cyclically, our energy levels are high and we have a great need to get things ticked off the list, declutter and prepare for hibernation in winter. I love this time of year before the clocks go back. It’s definitely a time to get things completed but also to remove any projects or goals that aren’t serving us. Make sure your working environment is full of warmth, inspiration and as cosy as possible.
CHRISTMAS
And the final “season” of the year is Christmas! I feel like December deserves its own section as it’s such a busy month for small business owners and consumers.
Every year I try to create an enjoyable build-up to Christmas so it’s not just about one exciting day that ends up being full of pressure and forced fun. My husband and I are extremely last minute people which can make the gift buying and food preparations very stressful. This year, my goal is to be minimal with gift buying (as most gifts are just contributing to landfill anyway…), and to prepare and get everything ready by the end of November. Thinking about it, it’s probably quite helpful for the post workers and small business owners to have orders and deliveries in November rather than December. So then in December, I’d like to use that spare time to rest with all the enjoyable activities like baking, crafts and decorating! Let’s see if this happens!
MONTHLY PLANNINg work & life
So we’ve got our word of the year, a rough seasonal plan of when to work and rest, and now it’s time to schedule things in and look at the little steps we need to take for our big goals.
I’m using The Circle Planner for the second time this year. After years of making my own planners and finding bullet journals too time consuming, this is just what I needed. There’s a double page spread for each week of the year, planning sections for each month with a monthly review at the end, and sections for daily habits.
This year I’ll also be using The Maker’s Yearbook for the first time which means I can separate work and life, using The Circle Planner for lifestyle, house chores and anything else that isn’t about my art shop or career.
In terms of planning, I set a goal or two… or three, for each month (you can never really have just one goal can you?!) I then write out very small action steps for each goal and then take a realistic look at my calendar and see what I can actually get done. This is after adding all the lifestyle activities and appointments, of course! This may be a time for decluttering your list and adding some projects to the ‘sometime in the future’ pile.
The best tip I’ve learnt for this part of the goals planning process is to chunk down the goals into very tiny steps. So many times I’ve made the mistake of writing a task on my to do list like “write blog post”, “create website”, “create and upload spring stationery products”. All of these tasks have no definite end and are way too big with many different parts to them. Nothing is better than ticking things off the list, so make the list full of lots of very small steps. It also really helps to get started on them!
Planning the weeks and days
Hopefully most of the groundwork should have been done by now. Weekly and daily planning is good for all the little calendar events like ‘food shop’, phone calls to make and other boring muggle tasks you may need a reminder for!
This is where I map out exactly what I’ll be doing each day in terms of designs I’ll be working on, website work and all of my marketing plans. As I mentioned before, I’m going to avoid being too meticulous and regimented this year. With lack of sleep and a one-year-old it’s definitely a good idea to keep my plans fairly loose. I’ll do this by:
adding catch up days;
prioritising all the time (which I’ve realised you get very good at as a mum);
accepting defeat when I need a day off;
scheduling in time for ‘play’ and rest; and
having just one objective for the day and/or week.
Well, there you go! This is how I’ll be planning 2023. Hopefully someone has taken something useful from that. If so, let me know in the comments or if you have any additional planning tips to share!