If you have been with me for a while you know that I am all about brainstorming and getting your thoughts onto paper.  I love this concept because it gives your thoughts life...it allows them to stop swimming around in your head and gets them in front of you.  At that point, those ideas/thoughts can take shape and become real concepts and plans can begin to develop around those ideas.

There is no better time to do this than at the beginning or end of a quarter.
<h2>Planning Season</h2>
I believe that in every person's life and business there is a natural planning season.  They vary for each person, but it is a natural break when it makes sense to review and readjust your life or business plan.  I think of this planning on both a mini and major level.  let me break this down so you understand the difference in the two planning types.
<h2>Micro Planning Season</h2>
So the micro season is the time through the year that you just do maintenance on your plan.  Think about it as your review and evaluation of a plan that is being worked.  So for example, lets say your family decides they want to move to a new house next year before your child enters high school.  So, theoretically you have twelve months to get all of this planned and done.  Well, there is no way you can do all of that in one sitting.  You are going to need a lot of that year to handle all of the things you need to handle.  Now, this would get more complicated if you were changing cities or states.  So during that year, you would need to build in some micro planning/maintenance sessions that allows you to review and adapt.

In my life, I build micro planning seasons in each quarter.  The quarter is a great break for me as that means I have worked for 90 days at something and by the end of the quarter I will know if I'm on track or not.  I will also know if I can build upon that momentum or need to regroup.
<h2>Macro Planning Season</h2>
The macro planning season is the one time of the year when you do what is known as master planning.  You are thinking about what you want to accomplish for the year and how you anticipate accomplishing it.  I consider this to be high level ideas and goals that you want to meet.  I encourage people to not get too granular during this planning session because there are many unknowns that exist at this level.  There is no way for you to know what is going to affect the success of a third quarter event.  You can plan the fact that you want an event and what you need to have accomplished prior to the third quarter, but the heavy duty planning for each of those pieces will fall during the micro planning prior to each of those quarters.  This is more of an incremental or agile type of approach to planning.
<h2>The Timing of Your Planning Season</h2>
I always get the question of how to time all of these planning sessions.  Again, the timing is more of a personal choice, but I typically recommend basing it on the natural ebbs and flows of your life or business.  For example, if you have school aged children, you have a natural flow to your life.  April is a good time to start planning for the summer; May - June is deep summer stuff.  Kids are out of school and this is often when vacations or special camps and things take place.  Your routine is completely different.  [note this varies depending on where you are in the country and whether your kids go year round or not].  You then have July which would be a natural time for you to begin planning/prepping for returning to school. Aug - Sept you and your kids are getting into the swing of things with your new schedule and school.  October is a great time to start planning for the holidays.  Nov - Dec is of course heavy duty holiday season not only for your family but with kids you have teacher gifts and friend gifts and parties, etc.
<h2>Personal vs. Life vs. Business Planning Cycle</h2>
Now, sometimes it is hard to navigate all of the demands on your life.  You have your personal goals and wants, you have your family needs, goals and wants and then you have the needs and goals of your business.  It is a lot to negotiate, but it is something we all must do.  I encourage you to resist sacrificing your personal wants, needs and goals for the other two areas.  We don't think twice about doing that, but it isn't a healthy balance.  It's not a good thing to do.  You see self-care is very important and I believe you need to build that into your planning season too.  I encourage you to plan at least one self-care day into each quarter.  I also encourage you to build in one couple self-care day into each quarter as well.  Oh and heck, go ahead and build one "self-care" day for each child into each quarter and one for your business as well.  When you take the time to schedule and plan these days, you are saying it is important.  You are saying, I'm important or You are important, this is important.  When building your planning calendar, you need to start with those days or at least those rules.  You could go as far as to say the fourth Saturday of every month is our family Saturday.  It is reserved for family focused activities.

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