Quarterly Planning

Every 3 months, I take a day out from work and go to a quarterly planning day, run by John Davison at ActionCoach.

It takes up a whole day. Plus a few hours beforehand in going through the materials, plus a few hours after in getting myself organised.

But it's worth it.

The weird thing is, even though it's a really simple process, it's taken a few quarters for me to get the hang of it.

We start with a review of the last quarter on the handout before the session - what's gone well, what hasn't, where do we feel like we need to make changes?

Then on the day itself, we work through why we're here - what's our long term plan, where do we want to be a in a year, what about in our personal lives too?

And from that, we work backwards - to get there in a year, where do we need to be in three months? What are the three things we need to achieve to get there? What do we need to do to complete those three things? And when are we going to do it.

The result is a timeline - three goals, 13 weeks, what are we doing on each week?

I then transcribe that timeline into my three month planning document, which in turn is used as the basis of my one month plan, my weekly plan and my daily plans.

Take action: Take some time out of your day to day and spend it looking at where you want to be. Then work backwards and figure out how to get there.