Ever since reading the 12-Week Year by Brian Morgan I think less in 12-month calendar time increments and more in quarters or months. I started questioning why I have to live off of someone else’s designated quarters. So I set up my own quarterly calendar. Ideally planned is what I call it. It fits me, and my life. I’ll give you a break down of my ‘ideal’, but my ideally planned life will not fit yours. Customize to your heart’s content.

My Year in Quarters

The future log in my planner happened to break it out perfectly by section:

Spring Quarter: February, March, & April

Summer Quarter: May, June, & July

Fall Quarter: August, September, & October

Winter Quarter: November, December, & January

How It Worked Out

My kiddos go back to school the first week of August, so that month doesn’t really feel like summer. I never feel ready to start a new year right after December and the whole slew of holidays beginning the end of October through December, so that’s why I figured I’d align the quarters and start a new year in February. The Chinese do it, so I think I’m in the majority. To clarify – it’s not about being in the majority. It’s about making things fit the way I need them to fit into my life.

One thing led to another, and I created an ‘Ideal Year, Month, Week & Day.’ It was very eye-opening how much time I have, and how much time I…don’t have. If you want to set priorities, I highly recommend creating an ‘ideal’ plan. Start with your ideal day and work backward. Or start with your ‘ideal year’ (things you do during certain times of the year) and work forward.

Things I do in the different Quarters of the Year:

• Spring: Refresh my house by cleaning, decluttering, setting goals, planning for family vacations
• Summer: Family Vacation, Back to School Planning
• Fall: Plan for next year’s calendar year, Recipe Revisions
• Winter: Focus on What Matters

There’s something about the promise of blossoms and blooms that renews my energy and love for life. As I figure it out, I will add miscellaneous house cleaning tasks. But I haven’t gotten there, yet.

Monthly Planning

If there were a weak link in my ideally planned spread, monthlies would be it. I love how planning out your ‘ideals’ shows you your weaknesses and what you can improve. To figure out my ideally planned month, first, I’ll start with a list of things to do every single month. Then break them down and assign them to specific days or weeks throughout the month.

For instance: on the last Sunday of the month, I back up photos, videos and do general digital upkeep on my files. New blog post out on Sundays & Thursdays, Newsletter 3rd Friday of each month. Plan for the next month when there are 2 full weeks left in the month. On the 1st of the month, I do an inventory of statistics.

A cleaning schedule breaks out nicely into monthly and weekly plans. From a financial standpoint indicate bill-pay days and paydays.

Ideal Week Plans

Of course, these plans ebb and flow with life and may change from week to week. This is the reason why my plans are ‘ideal.’ Knowing where to focus my efforts for family or cleaning on any given day when I have a small slot of time to get all the things done.

The other day, I listened to a radio host breaking down the hours in the week. If there are 24 hours in a day x 7 days per week =168 hours per week, subtract 8 hours per day for sleeping (who gets that much sleep in a day on a regular basis?!), remove the hours at work (typically 40 hours) and you have 72 hours left. My goodness, that sounds like a lot left over.

It got me thinking about what occupies my time. In my case, I have three kiddos, and they require (and I intend to give) a lot of time. Self-care time (including showers and getting ready), dinner prep, travel time and a myriad of other things. So if I could block like items together (even more than I do, already), it’s possible to conserve precious hours and minutes.

What do you do on a particular day of the week? I find that I get more laundry done if I assign it to a specific day. I clean my bathroom regularly if I know it’s Wednesday.  Adding recurring events like my son’s scouts on Thursdays helps me to not over-plan that evening.

Ideal Day Planning

This section was a HUGE eye-opener. I realized how much time I don’t have. So I have to choose what I want to do. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. If it’s not that important, reconsider. Time is a precious element every single day. Visually organizing my days, weeks, months, and years showed me just that. And emphasized how important it is to prioritize.

How to Make Your Own “Ideal” Plans

Not sure where to start? I recommend starting big and working down. Map out your year. Do you change batteries in your smoke detector in the Spring? When are your family vacations? Do you seem to always clean your house in the spring or hold garage sales when the weather turns nice? What about holiday shopping? Do you wish to have that all said and done by the end of October so you can enjoy the holiday season without the stress? Well, that’s a good thing to plan.

Ideal Year Plans

Ideal Year: Recurring events or tasks throughout the Year – for me I broke it into quarters.

However, you might break it month-to-month. For instance, if you have kids, do you shop for school supplies in August or July?

Ideal Month Plans

What tasks do you need to do each month? Can you assign them to a particular week or a specific day? Make a list of all the things you do. Cleaning, bills, tasks. See where it all fits in. You can make a calendar view here or add a second section where you list the days numerically. 1st & 15th – paydays. 5th, mortgage due. Etc.

Do you have recurring events? Include those so you can plan around those items.

Ideal Week Plans

What days do you feel stretched too thin? Are you scheduling too heavy on those days? What can you prioritize? For instance: if you have dance and soccer on Tuesdays for your kids and you’re gone from the moment the kids get out of school to the second they go to bed, scheduling laundry on that day is probably not a good idea.

Do you have any other recurring tasks to do during the week? Figure out what those recurring items and pencil them in. Move them around until it makes sense. Ideally planned is another word for ‘makes sense in my life’. At least in my opinion.

Ideal Day

Now, this is where things get real. List the hours in a day and plan out the big things first. Sleep, work, commute. Then start adding the smaller items around those scheduled chunks of time. Dinner prep and eating dinner seem to take up a good part of the time.

After the smaller ‘have to’ tasks appear on your day, start prioritizing. It’s not about how much time you have, it’s about how much priority you give the things in your life. I wanted to schedule more time for developing my business but saw that I took away time from my kids. I know they are a high priority and had to make a choice. Kids won out. Efficiency just became more important than ever.

Need help getting things done? Set a time to do a certain task. And include it in your habit tracker.

Check out my list of Mid-Month Habit Check Posts Here – there are so many things in my life I’ve improved by keeping a habit tracker.

Side note: I saw someone on Instagram who planned their ideal day and left nearly 4 hours to sleep every night. If that’s ideal to you, by all means, miss out on those precious zzz’s. But sleep is a huge part of my self-care regimen, so I schedule it out. I discovered when I scheduled my sleep, I made an effort to go to sleep then.

What is Ideally Planned – Really?

For me, ideally planned is not all about fantasy and the perfect life, it’s about the realities that we deal with regularly and how to map it out so life does not overwhelm us on any given day. Creating an ideally planned life allows you to map out your life on paper and show you where your strengths and weaknesses are. Any day life doesn’t overwhelm me, is an ideal day. You’ll have to define what ‘ideal’ means to you.