Mastering Your Monthly Planning Routine

Hey, my name is Teresa Hildebrand and this is Organized Chaos. We take a deep dive into living with intentionality, focusing on what's important in our lives so we can truly feel our best. It may feel chaotic at times, but with a little organization, the right mindset and a ton of self-love, we can still thrive. Join me as we talk to other busy moms and experts who will share tips and strategies to help you reach your goals. Hope you enjoy this episode of Organized Chaos. Now on to the show. Hey friends, welcome to this episode of Organized Chaos. Today we're going to be diving into monthly planning. You may be flying by the seat of your pants right now, but by the end of this episode you're going to be able to set clear goals, prioritize your task and create a realistic monthly action plan. I never used to create a monthly plan just because I felt like my life was so unpredictable that I didn't want to put in the energy and effort to create a plan that I knew probably wasn't going to happen. But what I realized was that if I basically just create a template for myself and say, okay, this is what I plan right now to do in the next 30 days, it would give me some type of structure. It would let me kind of put things down on paper and even if it didn't pan out the way that I thought it would which most of the time it didn't at least I had some type of plan where I can put in the effort to be more intentional. So the more practice I got, the better I got in creating the plan which helped me create the shorter, short term plans, like the weekly plans and then the daily plans. So, even though it may feel right now that it's like it's too daunting to create a monthly plan, it's still a great way for you to have a bird's eye view of what your month is going to look like. And if you're integrating your work and life, then it's super important to have this. Have a combined monthly plan so that you can see when you're going to be able to work, when you're going to have appointments, when things are due, and just having an idea of what lies ahead can reduce your anxiety if you do it properly. It can create more anxiety if you see so many things on your calendar, but I'm going to give you some tips on how to avoid that. So I'm going to give you three strategies today. So let's dive into strategy number one, and that is setting clear monthly goals. So this is about making sure that you know what your vision is for the future, right? So you're thinking long term and then you start to break it down Okay, what is it that I need to accomplish within the next 90 days? And then break it down even more what do I need to accomplish in the next 30 days? So this makes it a lot more feasible, because you're breaking things down into more bite sides, pieces. So this could be goals that are either personal, professional or you can even combine them both. So, for example, maybe one of your professional goals is to complete a major project and a personal goal would be to spend more time with your family. Now, the way you can actually combine that is that if you complete your major project, then you promise your family that you'll go and spend the weekend somewhere fun. So you're actually completing your project and you're spending more time with family and you've actually tied them together. We do this a lot when we're creating quarterly goals, because we'll promise the kids that we'll go somewhere big right Like Disneyland or a national park, and it gets the kids involved and they love that. Another thing I do is when I'm creating the goals, is I try to work my way backwards, just like I do with bigger goals. I reverse engineer. So I pick a day of whatever day I want to accomplish the goal and then I work my way backwards and every milestone I jot down which week it has to be or which day it has to be that I would have to accomplish that milestone. This is super helpful when you're trying to manage your time, and it's a great segue into strategy number two, because this is prioritizing task and activities. So I usually try to pick one time management strategy that can help me with this, so either the 80-20 rule or even the Eisenhower matrix, so that you can find what is most important and then get rid of the rest, not focus on the minor things that really don't move the needle forward. This is about focus and it's about hey, I have this particular goal and these are the things that are going to get me there, and these other things can either be done by somebody else or I just don't have to do them this month. So these are a lot of the things that you're going to have to sit down and figure out for yourself. But it's really important to distinguish between urgent and important task. Right, that's like the first quadrant in the Eisenhower matrix. It's hey, is this urgent and important? Because that is where I'm going to put my focus on. Prioritizing is going to help you reduce stress and make sure that the things that really need to get done won't get overlooked. Strategy number three is creating a realistic monthly action plan. So you can have the best intentions, but if you don't take action, then you're not going to accomplish anything and you're just going to start on square one in the next month. So I want to give you some tips on how you can do this, how you can not only create that action plan but actually take action. Now, these are the same tips I talk about when you're creating those big goals and then breaking them down. You want to break down your goals into actionable steps. Now, the way that I do this is I look for progress goals. So the progress goals are the ones I talked about before is like those milestones that you, you know, create that one goal and you, you set a deadline for it and then you start creating those progress goals. But within those progress goals, there are action steps. Let's say, for example, you want to clean out your garage. Your goal is to have a clean garage, so you look at what would be a progress goal. One progress goal would be to either trash or get rid of or donate certain things that are no longer useful for you in your garage. One action step would be to take inventory of what you have, so that way, you know what you need to get rid of and what you're going to be keeping. The next action step would be to find bins or a place where you're going to be storing whatever you keep, and you just keep going with the action steps. Usually, I have three action steps for every progress goal, and what you want to make sure you do which is the whole point of this is to schedule time to do it, so putting it on your calendar, so that way you know that you're setting time aside to actually take action. Okay, so those are my three strategies for creating a monthly action plan, and this will not work at all if you don't focus on this. One thing I'm going to tell you and you probably already know what it is and that is you scheduling time for you during the month. Now, this is a great way to make sure that you have some space for yourself and that you can keep going, because we can't be productive if we don't slow down and take care of ourselves. So make sure that in within your plan, you're setting boundaries both in terms of your time and your mental space and, of course, use tools that you know you're going to be able to use on a consistent basis Whether that's paper planners or paper calendars, or digital planners or digital calendars to do list anything that works best for you. Make sure that you use that so that you can stay consistent and stay accountable to what you're doing and always reflect on your progress, celebrate your wins and identify the areas that you feel like you need a little bit more work on. Now, as I wrap this up, I wanted to mention that I am working on a project, and it's something that I have been working on for a long time, trying to perfect it. Make sure that it is something that is going to be helpful for you as mom, so stay tuned for that. This is going to be something that everything that I talked about in this episode and all the other episode when it comes to planning, productivity, prioritization this is going to be a game changer. So make sure you stay tuned to the following episodes, because I'm going to be talking more about that. All right, that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I will see you next week.