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The 5-Step Process for Your 2020 Planning by @JThiefels

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The 5-Step Process for Your 2020 Planning

by Jessica Thiefels | Featured Contributor

I’m starting to hear the 2020 planning talk, but I’m not a big New Year goal setter. In fact, it stresses me out as January 1st gets closer and it’s all anyone can talk about. I’m more a year-round goal-setting kind of girl. This allows me to ebb and flow with changes while staying excited and on track—rather than putting undue pressure on one time of the year, which inevitably leads to giving it all up… but that’s a topic for another day.⁠

Even still, I go into each year knowing what I want to accomplish and I realized recently that I hadn’t painted a clear picture of what 2020 looks like for me. Someone asked: “So, what do you hope to accomplish speaking-wise next year?” I was like, “Ummm, to do it?” Not a great answer.⁠ I’m traveling the world, running a business and writing a book—planning for next year hadn’t quite crossed my mind with all of that going on.⁠

A few days later, I was talking with my coach and he said, “What’s possible if you start planning 2020?” My first thought was, “Well I’ll have a roadmap. Just like I talk about in my book. If you don’t know where you’re going, how can you get there?”⁠⁠

As I kept thinking about that question though, I realized: With a plan, I can do the work, visualize the outcome, and manifest my way there—and baby, I’m manifesting some seriously big things!⁠ 

If you’re ready to kick ass in 2020, now is a great time to start thinking about what you want to accomplish and manifest into reality. You don’t need to have specific, quantifiable goals. Simply outlining what you want to do is an important step toward committing to create the life you want to live. 

To start this new decade off on the right foot, use my 5-step planning process. I do this myself and love the flow and exploration of the planning experience when done this way.

Step 1: The Dream Dump

2020 planning

My 2020 Dream Dump

Start with a brainstorm, or what I lovingly like to call, a Dream Dump. Separate your plans into the various areas of focus for planning. For me, these are:

  • Book
  • Business
  • Speaking
  • Writing
  • Personal

List out all the things you want to accomplish within those areas. Then, let it sit for a few days so you can come back and add to your lists as more ideas come up. Remember: this is a list of the WHAT, not the HOW. So don’t hold back. If you want to accomplish something in 2020, it belongs on this list.

Step 2: The Action Steps

Once your list is complete, it’s time to look at the HOW. Start on a fresh page and break each area of focus into lists of action items. Some of the items on my book’s action list are:

  • Improve speaking (I.E. should I hire a coach?)
  • Create website
  • Outreach to podcasts

Your lists will likely be long, but this is your chance to get it all down on paper. Big or small, add the task to your list. We’ll come back and refine later.

Step 3: The Resource List

This tip is from my upcoming book and it’s crucial if you want to be successful: create a Resource List. This is a list of all the people and things that you can leverage to start moving toward those goals and checking off those action steps.

Think about people you know that can help along with things like a Udemy credit that hasn’t been used yet. My Resource List includes: 

  • Previous speaking connections at local college
  • Editorial relationships
  • Someone I met on an airplane (yes, I’m serious)
  • Client connections
  • Networking groups that I find beneficial

You may need to create a list for every area of focus—for me, many of them overlapped. You’ll figure it out as you start brainstorming. 

Step 4: The Refining

Now that your general action steps are written down, and you have a big ol’ list of potential people, places and things that you can leverage, it’s time to refine your action list and prioritize. This way, when January rolls around, you’re ready to hit the ground running. 

Start with the refining. Take the big action steps and break them down into smaller ones. Don’t forget to add action steps based on your resource List. I.E. Reach out to old boss or Buy tickets for conference.

Now, you need to prioritize. A prioritized list ensures that you know what needs to happen first. If you’re like me and have a lot of action steps, this will help reduce that overwhelm. Much of my initial 2020 work will revolve around my business and lining up experts to tap into when my book gets published. Then, when my book is out (and on the bestseller list!), I plan to move into the next area of focus: speaking, workshops, and general book promotion.

Consider how your action steps can be refined and prioritized in this way to head into 2020 with a plan you can rely on.

Step 5: The Manifesting

You know what you want. You know what you have to do to get there. Now it’s time to manifest your goals into reality. To do so effectively, follow a simple equation:

Visualize + do the work = manifest

I’m giving you this “equation” because I want to make something clear: visualizing alone, won’t allow you to manifest what you want. Not to mention, doing the work without a vision doesn’t get you far either. To manifest the big-amazing-holy-shit things, you have to do both! And you can start right now.

Start Your 2020 Planning

Now’s the time to start thinking about 2020—before the holidays hit, along with the stress, chaos and distractions that come with them. Use this 5-step process to get your big plans out of your head and onto paper. With a crystal clear picture of what you want to accomplish, and even better, how to make it happen, 2020 will undoubtedly be a year to remember.

Creating Ease When Your Schedule Runneth Over by @MelindaMassie

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Effective perhaps, but not ideal.

Effective perhaps, but not ideal.

by Melinda Massie  | Featured Contributor

All too often, our schedules run us instead of the other way around.

The other week I saw Elf the Musical. In it, there’s a song where the business man/father’s assistant is telling him his schedule. It was ridiculous. Only 15 minutes for meetings. 5 minutes to draw up things that clearly would take weeks or months. No break in between for breath or bathroom.

Yes, I noticed. I can’t turn off the professional organizer.

In this scene, the schedule was CLEARLY running the man instead of the other way around.

This, my Sunshines, is unacceptable.

So how can we prevent this from happening to us?

Time to create our “ideal week.”

Take out a trusty planner, calendar app, or whatever your scheduler of choice it. You can even create a spreadsheet with the days of the week across the top and down the side are the times of day (waking to sleeping) in 30 minute increments.

Next, make a list of all of your priorities, duties, and obligations. Include personal and professional. Many people try to separate their personal and professional lives but I think that just creates more work. You’re but one person working with a limited capsule of time. To make it all work it helps to see it all in one place. I also like to prioritize this in order from most important to least important.

Now to our schedules:

First – Block out time for self-care. Like the flight safety instructions tell you, put your own oxygen mask on before helping others. If you don’t take care of yourself, you’ll have nothing to give to your family, friends, and business. So whatever it is that makes you feel better: mediations, hot baths, yoga, cocktails with friends, indulgent meals. Whatever recharges you: book it.

Second – Block out time all of your musts, highest priority tasks and actions that will move you towards your goals. Getting this on the calendar will help make sure that lesser priority tasks don’t edge out the important things.

Everything else: Is something lower on the priority list and didn’t fit onto the calendar? Think about whether you need it at all. Or can you delegate it? (i.e. – use a laundry service to save time)

Pro tip: Feel uneasy about or think that hiring out household tasks is out of your budget? Put a dollar figure on what your time is worth. Now look at how much time you spend on that activity. What does that activity cost you in time? Is it more or less than what it would cost to have someone else do it? There’s your answer.

For incoming activities, really think about whether you want/need to do it before automatically saying yes. Just as with your things, does this event, meeting or other ask on your time serve your priorities? Does it make you happy? Does it bring you joy? If yes, get it on the calendar. If not, gracefully say “no.”

Feelin it’s a maybe? One of my favorite decision-making techniques that I’ve often heard and was reminded about while reading “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeown is this:

“If it’s not a clear yes, then it’s a no.”

So no maybes allowed.

Seriously.

For the record, those “maybes” end up being the schtuff that crowds your schedule. These are the items that slowly erode at your time, energy, and brain space. Most often, we say “maybe” because we don’t want to let people down with a no. And they may be temporarily disappointed with a no. However, you’re also wasting their time, and eroding at their energy and efforts by making them wait for what will ultimately be a “no.”

Truth time: This is something I’m still working with as well. It takes time and practice to override past behaviors. But in the end we’re all much happier for it when we’re honest with ourselves and the limits to our schedules and energy.

Take control over your schedule. Think about what your ideal week looks like. Then schedule it. It may take some time for the current overworked schedule to unravel and settle into the new one but with some boundaries and coaxing it will. Afterwards, you’ll have a much more fulfilling schedule that helps take care of you while you make it happen!

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Melinda Massie – Professional Organizer of Organizing with a Side of Fabulous – Ft. Worth, TX

Melinda Massie headshot - croppedMelinda is the sassy, redheaded best friend you always wanted. Called everything from slave-driver to life-saver to organizing ninja, her natural organizing skills and vivacious attitude will make getting organized suck less.

She’s on a mission to prove that being organized has nothing to do with bins and labels. And it definitely isn’t about perfection. Organization is about addressing what is standing in your way so you can let go of the excess clutter and create the home that supports your dreams and goals. Her education in advertising and marketing means she can guide you past the common traps in today’s mass consumerism “stuff” culture (you know, the b.s. that leads to unwanted purchases and excess clutter) while her former careers in professional ballroom dance and event planning means she still likes to make everything sparkle.

Melinda works with mildly cluttered to mildly hoarded people all over the country. She’s also teamed with extreme-cleaning crews to safely clear out massive clutter situations. She was named “Best Personal Organizer” by Fort Worth, TX Magazine and her tips have been featured in Shape, Woman’s Day, and WeTV as well as many other local and national publications.

When not clearing clutter, Melinda enjoys performing as a supernumerary with the Fort Worth Opera, yoga, cooking and eating indulgent food and believes that champagne is meant for the everyday.

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