An Alternative to Planning Your Life Around the Calendar

I don’t plan my life and work around a conventional annual calendar. I plan around the vision I’m working towards in each chapter of my life and work. 

That means it doesn’t start with a big push in January or get broken down into neat quarterly goals. It’s an ongoing, rolling work in progress. No hard reset at the beginning or end of the year. Just figuring out the next small, realistic steps to take week by week, month by month.

I’ve found this creates a far more manageable pace and sustainable momentum, and keeps me out of overwhelm and burnout. 

I don’t tie progress to arbitrary dates. I work at a pace linked to real-time circumstances, energy, and capacity. Sometimes that pace is faster, and sometimes it’s slower. Sometimes it means taking time out altogether. But momentum still moves in the right direction consistently. I tie my progress to what is actually happening in real time and what matters most based on that, not to what the calendar says should be happening because it’s a particular time of year. 

This approach works for me. Working with a conventional calendar might work perfectly well for you. There’s no right or wrong way. The key is not blindly following a way of planning just because it’s what everyone else does. Just because the annual calendar is the usual way of planning doesn’t mean it’s mandatory or right for everyone.

The real question is whether the way you’re planning actually supports you to move towards what matters most, without creating unnecessary pressure, stress, or overwhelm. 

If you want to try this approach, here’s a simple place to start: 

– Think in steps, not time blocks. 

– Identify your next few steps towards what you want to create and take them. 

– Review how it went, then decide the next most appropriate blocks of steps based on what’s going on in real time. 

– Repeat. 

Ask yourself what feels like a realistic next step right now, based on what’s actually going on in your life, not what you think you should be doing because of the calendar. See what comes up for you and how it feels. 

If it feels more supportive, run with it. If it doesn’t, before defaulting back to the calendar, ask yourself what would support you better. Design your own way of planning. Experiment with that. Keep experimenting until you find something that’s the right fit for you.