Doing effective weekly review means keeping life under control on day-to-day level. Incoming tasks and information get handled. Projects have next actions. But the gap between a year and a week is too big. Something else is needed in between.
Why weekly review is not enough?
Weekly review is essential part of the process.
I believe everyone should do it. Even those who don’t have specific goals have either life vision or a dream. At the end of the day enjoying present life and wanting to live just like that is also a life vision.
The power of weekly review is to avoid snowball effect. We have a constant flow of things requiring our time while there is a fixed number of hours in a day to tackle them. It helps to keep requests happening in life under control. Both internal and external.
Internal requests come from our dreams, goals, and ideas.
External requests come from other people, organizations, and emergencies.
They are all ground level. They are dynamic, require constant attention, and quick reaction. We’re looking right at the trail and avoid obstacles on it.
Goals on the other hand are the top of the mountain level. We can see them and a path only when we look up.
When going up the mounting most of the time we look in front of us and occasionally up to see the big picture.
Why quarter is a perfect spot?
One could argue that a month is a good time to look up. I believe that a month is too small.
Unfortunately in real life majority of the time we spend reacting to requests. People with jobs and families have just a coupe of hours per week to work on a goal. This worths just about four full-time days a month. Not much, right?
I believe that quarter is much better period.
Reviewing how past quarter went and learn lessons is important, planning upcoming quarter is essential to keep going in right direction.
Planning should be corner stone part.
What to focus on at quarterly planning?
Essentially on goals and strategic projects.
Goals that continue from previous quarter may need correction of direction or change in a path to achieve them.
Goals that start in upcoming quarter need initial plan.
In both cases it’s about finding a path, breaking it into strategic projects, followed by breaking down projects into steps.
During planning process questions will arise. Not all of them have clear and immediate answers. That’s fine. Quarter planning doesn’t have to answer all of them. Answering those defining the direction is enough.
How to do quarterly planning?
While many suggest blocking a day and do it in one sitting, I don’t find this a good approach.
Blocking whole day is quite a challenge. What I find even more important is that this means making right decision right here and right now.
I prefer spreading quarter planning over a week allocating 1-2 hours a day. This lets me have right mood for each step in the process and opportunity to think twice when I see options before picking one.
First session is dedicated to reviewing current quarter, making conclusions and lessons.
Second session is to define goals for upcoming quarter. Some continue from previous quarter. Some come from year intentions. By the way, goal is not limited to a quarter. It’s completely fine to have a goal requiring two or three quarters to achieve.
Next three sessions are to define strategic projects and their steps. Important is to have them for upcoming quarter. When goal is planned to be achieved in some future quarter then anything that is beyond upcoming quarter usually is too blurry.
Final session is to review everything once again and asses how realistic the plan is.
Effective weekly reviews manage daily life, but closing the gap between yearly goals and weekly tasks requires quarterly planning. It’s the sweet spot for setting and assessing goals and strategic projects.
Start stacking that experience my friends.
Andrii
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