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Life planning

The weekly planning⚑

I follows these steps:

  • Empty your inbox channels
  • Check and adjust the tickler and the calendar of the next two weeks
  • If you have it check the month plan guidelines
  • Do the project refinement.

It's difficult to do the weekly review until you get the correct process that suits you right now. I'm still struggling with it.

Month plan⚑

The objectives of the month plan are:

  • Define the month objectives according to the trimester plan and the insights gathered in the past month review.
  • Make your backlog and todo list match the month objectives
  • Define the topics to learn
  • Define the habits to incorporate
  • Define the checks you want to do at the end of the month.

It's interesting to do the plannings on meaningful days such as the first one of the month. Usually we don't have enough flexibility in our life to do it exactly that day, so schedule it the closest you can to that date. It's a good idea to do both the review and the planning on the same day.

We'll divide the planning process in these phases:

  • Prepare
  • Clarify your state
  • Decide the month objectives

Prepare⚑

It's important that you prepare your environment for the planning. You need to be present and fully focused on the process itself. To do so you can:

  • Make sure you don't get interrupted:
    • Check your action manager tools to make sure that you don't have anything urgent to address in the next hour.
    • Disable all notifications
  • Set your analysis environment:
    • Put on the music that helps you get in the zone.
    • Get all the things you may need for the review:
      • The checklist that defines the process of your planning (this document in my case).
      • Somewhere to write down the insights.
      • Your action manager system
      • Your habit manager system
      • Your Objective list.
      • Your Thinking list.
      • Your Reading list.
    • Remove from your environment everything else that may distract you

Clarify your state⚑

To be able to make a good decision on your month's path you need to sort out which is your current state. To do so:

  • Clean your inbox: If it's feasible in a short period of time refile each item until it's empty otherwise quickly overview it to see if there is any thing that needs to be addressed this month.
  • Clean your todo: Review each todo element by deciding if they should still be in the todo. If they do and they belong to a month objective, add it. If they don't need to be in the todo, refile it.

Decide the month objectives⚑

Create the month objectives in your roadmap file after addressing each element of:

  • Your last month review document.
  • The trimester objectives of your roadmap.
  • You can add notes on the trimester objectives

Decide the next steps⚑

  • For each of your month objectives:
  • Decide whether it makes sense to address it this month. If not, archive it
  • Create a clear plan of action for this month on that objective
  • Tweak your week distribution
  • Check your calendar to see how many free days you have.
  • Taking into account the month objectives select the are you want to focus on in each week day.

  • Document the week distribution in your roadmap document and make it visible in your weekly planning process.

  • Refine the roadmap of each of the selected areas (maybe for the trimestral? too soon to do it in the monthly planning IMHO)

  • Define the todo of each device (mobile, tablet, laptop)
  • Tweak your things to think about list.
  • Tweak your investigations list.
  • Tweak your reading list.
  • Tweak your habit manager system.

Monthly planning⚑

  • Analyze the current circumstances to decide which areas is best to focus on

  • Do the area refinement of the selected areas.

  • Make the whole system meet the new objectives:

  • The think document
  • The investigate document
  • The learn document

Trimester plan⚑

The objectives of the trimester plan are to adjust your life path to meet the semester plan:

  • Define the trimester direction:
  • Refine all area documents
    • Clean the roadmaps without priority change
    • Refine the area objectives
  • Review the trimester review document
  • Define the trimester objectives

References⚑