From Planning to Doing: Quarters, Weeks, and Days

In the past few weeks, you've learned crucial parts of my goal-setting process: Reflection, Identity, Vision Creation, and Category Design. 

Today, we get into the meat of it: we're goals into systems that get us results. You'll learn how to plan your quarters, weeks, and days. Let's dive in!

Quarters

An interesting fact about the human mind: it's not wired to think in long-term periods. 

Since our brains are wired for survival, they're just concerned with getting through each day. It's hard for it to sacrifice immediate pleasure in favor of delayed gratification. But there's a way to cheat the system.

Don't get me wrong, every quarter I plan takes into account my 20-year vision, 1-year vision, and all the ones in between. However, I only act in terms of the results I want three months from now. I find this timeline is long enough to create impactful change but short enough that I can envision it.

Everything we imagined in parts one and two becomes real here. 

To plan a quarter:

First, realize you already did most of the work for this part when you designed your categories. You already know what you want to have accomplished three months from now.

You're just missing the plan to make it happen.

At this point, it's crucial to define your goals in terms of actions you can take. Focus on what's 100% in your hands. So, for example, instead of setting the intention to "make 100 sales" you can choose "send 1000 cold emails." If you focus on the input, the output will come naturally.

For this purpose, I use trackers. 

Not only trackers for things I want to do daily, like habits, but trackers for things I want to do once each month, milestones I'm working towards, etcetera. I do this all by hand in my bullet journal, because it's the system that works best for me.

A couple of trackers I'm using right now:

• Poems: I want to write at least 60 poems in the first quarter. I make an x on this tracker every time I write one. 

• Income: I want to raise my monthly income to $1.5k this quarter. I created a small tracker with a $500, $1k, and $1.5k mark to symbolize when I hit each one.

• Joy: I want to find three non-productive activities I can do by myself that bring me joy. I created a tracker for this. It has space for an x when I discover each, space for the name, and the date I find it.

• Family: I want to have 1-1 quality time with my closest family memebers at least once this quarter, so I've made a tracker for it.

• Project: I want my book to be ready for publishing by the end of this quarter, so I have a tracker with every action I need to take between now and then.

I'm using a lot more than these. I create the trackers based on the 3-month goals I established in my Category Design process. 

Then, I just focus on filling in the squares.

Weeks

When planning and starting your weeks becomes exhilarating and inspiring, you can start living a life that feels as amazing on Monday as it does on Saturday. It is life-changing. 

You create this feeling week by week, making time for activities you love (or activities that move you towards what you love) every day. 

Now, once again, realize you're not starting from scratch here. You know what you're moving towards. You know there are things you want to do daily and weekly this quarter, levers you need to move, changes you need to make. 

Now, you need to schedule a time for them to happen.

To plan a week:

1. Create a Capture List: write out everything you know you have to do, from your job, to college classes, to doctor's appointments, to doing laundry. Just dump it all on the page. Don't forget to look at your quarterly trackers and see what you need to do this week to mark a few Xs on them.

2. Decide how you will distribute your week: there are three main ways to structure your weeks: by categories, by days, or by a combination of the two. Some people prefer to know what exactly gets done on what day. Others like to have freedom within each day, but certainty that every category is moving forward. I've done both, and they have both worked in different periods of my life. Right now, I'm doing a combination of the two. So I'll explain that.

3. In your capture list, find what belongs to each category. 

4. Distribute what actions you'll take in each category each day. I like to make it so Monday-Friday I get movement in most categories, and focus my weekends on family, social life, rest, and health.

5. Put this all down on paper. Right now, I'm using a grid setup. You can see it below.

6. Plan for inconveniences and obstacles: Anticipate that some days, you may not have the time to work on each category. Leave a little bit of room each day in case you fall behind. This is something I've had to learn the hard way.

That's it! You have officially planned a week. 

Days

Now, you planned your days when you planned your weeks. 

The only thing left to cover is ensuring you get it done.

Two things are crucial here: finding your sacred hours, and considering your scheduled activities.

Your sacred hours are those when you'll work on what truly matters to you: what will get you to your dreams. Not the goals given to you by your boss or professors. YOUR dreams, YOUR goals. 

Your scheduled activities are all which have a preset time and date. These generally involve other people. 

In my case, I know my afternoons are pre-scheduled: it's when I teach dance classes.

So my sacred hours are in the morning. 

If you have a 9-5 job, your sacred hours might be between 7-10 p.m. 

There is no right or wrong time for this. There's what works for you and what doesn't.

The secret to this is to make sure by the time you reach your sacred hours, you know exactly what to do. Clarity kills procrastination.

These are the steps I take every night to make sure I get everything done when I wake:

1. Review if there's anything from today that needs to be moved over to tomorrow.

2. Number in which order you'll do the activities that fall under your sacred hours - this removes decision paralysis when you sit down to work.

3. Set an estimate for how long each activity will take. For example, I know writing this newsletter takes about one and a half to two hours. But I only learned this after estimating one hour in the first few weeks and realizing it wasn't enough time. 

4. Play against a timer. This gamification strategy accelerates workflow significantly. Put a timer in the corner of your screen, where you can see it. This method appeals to Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time allocated for it. Using a timer makes you faster and reduces procrastination. As soon as the timer starts, it's go time. During the 10, 30, 45, or 90 minutes you have allocated to the activity, maintain deep focus. Put your phone far away from you. If you finish before the timer, two things happen: first, you'll feel extreme accomplishment, and second, you get a break until the timer goes off and you set the next one. 

5. Take breaks. I try to take breaks after every 90 minutes to 2 hours of deep work. Lately, my preferred breaks are walks. They increase clarity of mind and create space for creativity to emerge. 

6. Leave empty spaces in your calendar. Also a tough one to learn for me. Planning your day with back-to-back activities is an almost sure way to know you'll fall behind at some point during the day. Now, I leave a good space around lunchtime. If I fall behind during the morning, I have time to catch up. If I'm on time, I get extra rest. I also don't let myself do anything work-related after 8 p.m., when I finish teaching dance. I use this time to unwind, rest, and spend time with those I love. These empty spaces are the key to sustainability.

Putting it all together

If you have followed along with every step described in the last three newsletters, there is no way you're not feeling ultimate levels of clarity right now. 

You have determined your 20-year vision and narrowed it down into 1-day actions. From me to you, congratulations! This is how you create your life, instead of surviving it. 

Now, there is one thing that can't be missing if you want to truly experience the transformation you have been writing about here: commitment. 

You must commit to following through, day after day, week after week, year after year. It is not a project that will take you a couple of months. This is your life, and it deserves your ultimate focus and effort. You are becoming who you are truly meant to be. You are creating your identity.

I love this quote by Bill Gates: "people overestimate what they can do in a year, but underestimate what they can do in a decade." Think in decades, not days. Commit to the path for life, not for a month. And I assure you, there is no way your dreams will not come to you.

I hope you have enjoyed this 3-part series and found it useful. Everything I shared is how I create my own life. I know firsthand the impact this all has. So far, it's going great. I trust you'll take advantage of it.

In case you missed them, here are part one and part two of this series. Go through the three of them, and see your life transform.

I hope the rest of your week feels like being so at peace, it's almost confusing. Like reading a page-turner, and realizing it's your life's story. Like hugging a loved one you haven't seen in years.

Until next Wednesday!

-Vale, The Friendly Artist