Everyone who knows me or reads this site knows that I’m a planner. One of the most relaxing things I can do is sit down with my physical planner, some nice pens and a coffee, and work through what’s coming up and what I want to achieve. This most recent quarterly review really made me consider mindset and much as actions.

I’d actually blocked a time aside in my calendar at the end of June and arranged to not be in charge of the small, loud tornado that is my toddler. I was looking forward to it, but when the day actually arrived I was feeling nothing short of meh. Instead of ploughing on with it, I decided to reschedule. Not once, but twice.

Current planner and essential mildliners

This isn’t like me, but given the current situation, it seemed like the most logical choice. It’s so hard to plan and dream when there are so many unknowns. Sure, the UK is coming out of lockdown, but so was Florida and Texas. Coming out of lockdown basically requires people to be sensible and thoughtful of others. I don’t have much faith in other humans at the best of times, but throw alcohol and new-found freedom into the mix and I can’t help but be prepared for a bumpy ride. Going into a planning and dreaming session with such a negative mindset is a recipe for disaster.

Add into the fact I was coming off a month of sleepless nights (my own fault for mentioning that a certain child had started sleeping through at last, thus causing some slapback from the universe), and I was struggling with the reviewing part, let alone the planning for the future.

Just grateful for coffee I guess

Quite simply, mindset matters, much more than the day of the week. It’s easy when you have a perfectionist, upholder streak to do the review at the set time and place because that’s the best way and what you always do. In reality, it won’t matter if your quarterly review isn’t complete until a week into the new quarter (I finally finished the detail of mine this morning). What matters is that you’ve set some goals and plans that you feel enthusiastic about and hopeful for and that are within your control. This isn’t the time for massive stretch goals, not unless you have no family responsibilities and a higher than average autonomy over your surroundings. The pandemic planning mindset is about incremental progress forwards and celebrating the small wins. We’re in this for the long haul.

Work with what you have right now

Anyone who wants a good framework on how to do effective reviews should sign up for Sarah Hart-Unger’s email list and get her free planner download. It’s pretty much exactly what I’ve done for years (although she uses a very interesting quintiles system rather than quarters), but her template looks much nicer than anything I have right now! Her blog is always worth a read, especially her current pandemic blogging streak.

And talking of email lists, it came to my attention that mine had been disabled for a week or so. It should all be sorted now (thanks to mail chimp for the speedy customer service), so if you’ve tried to download a template and it failed, then please try again. If you still have problems, feel free to get in touch and I’ll take a look as soon as I can.