In my last Free For All Friday, I talked about planning the big annual overview. As a continuation of that, this year I am also doing quarterly planning.
Normally I have a rough estimate in my mind of what happens each quarter, but this year I'm actually writing it on paper.
There are a few different ways to break the year into quarters. The one I'm doing is where Jan-Feb-March is Q1, April-May-June is Q2, etc. In the past I have also done seasonal quarters, where Dec-Jan-Feb is Winter, March-April-May is Spring, June-July-Aug is Summer, and Sept-Oct-Nov is Autumn.
This year for my quarterly planning, I'm writing out personal and work things that are happening each quarter. This is a more focused view of the year than my annual overview. At this view, I can focus on projects and events that are happening during each quarter.
For example, in my personal life, the back-to-school season is always busy (because I have kids in school and because I volunteer at the school in several roles). The holiday season is of course always busy.
For work, certain quarters are more busy for certain clients. For our client whose big event is in September, we will be very busy in Q3. For other clients, Q2 is their busiest time. By having an overview of the quarters and what is generally happening for each client, I can map out a game plan.
Do you do quarterly planning?
And as always on Fridays, feel free to discuss and/ or ask anything ring binder organiser related!
Happy Friday everyone!
Hi Laurie,
ReplyDeleteGreat idea about quarterly planning. Think it's a good way to break up the year in chunks to manage it.
Mostly do quarterly planning at work to assess how much progress my team is making during the year and to see if it will be a fairly even flow (roughly 25% of total yearly work done each quarter) or will it be a 'hockey stick' year (let's say Q1 10%, Q2 10%, Q3 30%, Q4 50%...) where a visual graph of this progress trend line would look like a hockey stick due to big upward spike towards end of year. And also tells me that there will be a lot of stress and pressure the last half of year in order to meet yearly goals, as if anything slips in the second half, it means work is sliding into the next year.
Hope this makes sense.