Quarterly planning for introverts

Hello and welcome to the Travelling Introvert. Going to talk about quarterly planning. And the reason I'm doing this is because it's come up a lot both on social media plus with clients that I've spoken to. And one thing that I'm hearing resounding against and again is that why is quarterly planning the norm? A lot of people in different organisations find that they do quarterly planning.

The quarter starts and then halfway through the quarter they have to start planning the next quarter. And so their mind is never really on what they're supposed to be accomplishing this quarter because they're desperately sort of thinking about what the next goal is rather than concentrating on achieving the first goal that they had set. And that's really interesting along with the fact that. Okay. Financials tend to be quarterly and business tend to be quarterly.

But does it have to be a set quarter when people are thinking about. For example. Right now. If you listen to this episode in time. It is Q Four and it's considered to be the last quarter of the year and people are thinking.

Okay. What can I do in Q Four now? I happen to be right now in the United States and Q Four involved, okay, all of October. That's great. Probably half of November because Thanksgiving hits the second to last week of November.

So people are already like trying to think of travel plans are not really there, thinking of cooking or already starting to wind down. And then you've got the week you come back from Thanksgiving which is catching up with all the stuff that you didn't do and all that good stuff. And then you've got like a couple of weeks of December and depending where other festival holidays turn up there, sometimes holidays will turn up early or later in December depending on what you do or do not celebrate. And then you have the holiday season and that can start anywhere, sort of like mid December. So Q Four, when people are planning for Q Four they're like, okay, what can I do in the next three months?

But the reality of it is probably more like a month and a half and you're trying to squeeze all these things in and this doesn't just happen for Q Four a lot of the time. So at the start of the year you're thinking, okay, I have a whole year, I have twelve months, I'm going to make this plan. And a lot of the time we make a plan based not on really good hard data. When we plan, we normally plan, okay, we've got three months, split that three months up into each individual month and then into each individual week. Like, okay, so I have 40 hours to work on Eckh.

But do you really? Because do you actually consistently work at 100% for 40 hours a week? For most of you, I'm guessing the answer is no. So already your math is wrong and then you're not taking into consideration days where you don't feel 100% or days that you are sick and or days where something comes up like the car breaks down or you get covert, like there's all sorts or just sick. There'll have to be covered.

But these things happen. And when we make our plans, we do not take these things into consideration. We assume that we'll be 100% working 40 solid hours for that time, and that's not doing you or anyone else any favours. And also when we're planning and one of the time, we don't take into consideration the time needed to recharge. Great.

I can think that I'm going to go to five networking events per month. Am I factoring in travel, preparing and recharging from said events? Probably not. And this is where the biggest part of where introverts make bad decisions when they're thinking about planning in general, they don't take into consideration, okay, when do I work at my best? What kind of tasks do I do at my best?

And when I'm at my worst, what can I do to recharge and how long does that take? And is that just recharging mentally or is that recharging physically as well? So when you are planning, be it Q, four off the whole year, trying to take more time to take those things into account is really helpful. For example, for me, when I am doing planning, it's a case of look at the calendar. Where are all the holidays that could possibly happen, depending on what country?

And is it federal holidays, national holidays? Insert word here holidays. Okay, those are blocked out in my calendar. All right, what other holidays? Like, do I work for my birthday?

What about family members or things that I do on a regular basis? For example, pie day not working part day. I'm making pies on pie day. So taking those into consideration, when you are doing your planning, you shouldn't be thinking about what do I need to do first? You should be thinking about what things are there already that give me break, that gives me pause, that sparks joy and helps me recharge and live my best life.

I could talk about more about this, but I'm not going to right now. So thank you for listening. This is Janice@thecareerintrovert.com helping you build your brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.