Often at the end of the year, I take an extended break beyond the Christmas and New Year period. It is a time I like to have some downtime from work and my business, spend time with my loved ones, get some overdue things or domestic things done, like a bit of gardening or cleaning out my wardrobe, or head away for a little trip.

This year my husband and I packed up with our Roof Top Tent and headed off on an adventure for 3 weeks. We had our start and end destinations planned, and a rough idea of where we might travel, but nothing set in concrete, and nothing booked.

To say we had an amazing time would be an understatement!!!

Once we returned, I knew I needed to get my head back into the business and do some planning for the year.

I missed out on getting my favourite planner (bad currency rates and international shipping), so I am working this year using a goal planning book, a monthly overview, and a normal daily planner that has a section for daily goals, a to-do list, and time slots. I will have to say that after one week I am already missing my weekly planning page and the monthly planning page from the planner I used last year, so I may need to improvise and create a digital version, or use Asana for this year as a trial. (Although I love apps, I also love the good old paper & pen!)

I decided to simplify some of my annual planning.

If this is something you are interested in here is what I did. For clarity, I do my business and personal planning separately.

Big Goals

The first thing I did was write a small list of my big goals for the year.

For this year for me this was a list of 5 things and are ones that I know will give me a push. These included my revenue goal and the number of times I planned to launch my new program. The bigger goals are things that I will be able to break down later into milestones of how to reach the goal.

Smaller Goals

Next, I write a list of smaller goals.

These include training I wanted to start or finish. These are goals for me that I don’t really need to break down further, more an item that I can tick off when completed or reached.

Word of the Year

I like to choose a word of the year.

This year my word is Visibility.

It is something I want to focus on as I often have let imposter syndrome take over in the past and not been as visible as I should be. I am going to push myself past my comfort zone this year and do some things that I am not as comfortable doing, like live training.

Key Dates

 I grab out an annual calendar and block out all the time I know I am not available. Things like Easter and long weekends, or trips I already know I have planned and special family and friends events.

 This gives me a visual of the time I have available.

 From there I can start to plan launch dates and special events, planning dates etc.

 I am someone who works better with deadlines and it’s amazing how much little is sometimes left to work on business tasks, which means I need to be laser-focused in the times I have.

Content Plan

 Following on from the key dates, I can do an overview plan of my content based on launch and event dates.

Consistency is a key focus for me this year in both showing up and the content I produce. So, I can start to plan my overview of blog post topics, allowing me to come back and fill the gaps with the rest of my content after. (I have separate time blocks for my content plan, content creation, and content scheduling)

This is a simple plan you can do and step yourself through these things. It will allow you to come back later, set a 90 Day Goal to focus on, and break it down into milestones and tasks.

If you haven’t already done some Annual Planning for the year, set aside a little bit of time and do this process above. Annual Plans don’t need to be massive and detailed. This is not to say that you can’t do a more detailed one.

 And if you didn’t already do an End of Year Review, download my Annual Review Workbook with easy questions to work through. This is always best to do prior to doing the new year’s Annual Plan.

You can get a copy here 👇👇

Annual Review Workbook 👈👈