Ninety days.
That’s all that’s left of 2024. It doesn’t sound like much, does it? Yet it’s a quarter of a year, a full season. You still have plenty of time to finish strong.
It’s a question of focus. Choose the projects you want to progress. Decide what obstacles to clear out of your way. And be realistic about what extra work can be done, along with everything already on your plate.
It’s also about balancing work with fun, rest, self-care, and remembering that you’re in this for life, rather than pushing yourself into crash and burn.
Finally, it’s worth predicting in advance the stories you’ll tell yourself, the mental blocks you’ll put it your own way. (Because you will – you’re human!) It means you’ll recognise it more quickly when it comes – and get over it faster.
Your planning process will evolve and grow as you do. But as a rough guide to start you off, here’s how I plan out my next 90 days.
Set a mood, and some intentions.
You might want to make a collage, a soundtrack, or write down a few words to set the mood, your intentions for your next three months. I make a Pinterest board to clarify what I want: in life, as well as in work.
It’s autumn in the UK, so for me this next 90 days is all about autumn walks, foraging for berries, snuggly jumpers, warming soups, dinners with friends, blankets on the sofa and a pile of good books to read. Plus a lot of exploratory writing. (I recently finished writing a book, so I’m looking for my next big project.)
It gives me a visual reminder of what I want to enjoy and notice over the next 90 days, before I do more detailed planning.
Check your calendar.
Next, examine your existing commitments:
- Holidays, trips, celebrations, events, family responsibilities.
- Work appointments, bookings, travel, and any big meetings you already know about.
- Existing project deadlines. Mark these in your calendar. Estimate roughly how long it will take you to do the work, and add 20% for contingencies. Then work backwards from the deadline and block out the time you’ll need. You won’t keep to a schedule made so far in advance. But every time a new appointment comes in, don’t delete that block of work time. Move it to the next available space. That way, you’ll always have enough time to get key projects done to deadline.
Now you have a rough idea of time available.
Once you also factor in space for meetings, for admin, for exercise, self-care and (hopefully) a social life, there’s unlikely to be a huge amount of free time left. So be realistic about what you can do in 90 days.
Try to start small, rather than setting big, ambitious targets. Set yourself up to win. (You can always add more if you finish everything.)
But if you do over-commit and fail, don’t beat yourself up. Just adjust when you make your next 90-day plan. It took me 3-4 cycles of making quarterly plans before I began setting goals that were a stretch, but realistic.
Even then, life gets in the way: a great new opportunity arises, a friend needs help, your car breaks down, something takes much longer than you thought. Your plan isn’t carved in stone: it’s just a guide, helping you work more on the things that are truly meaningful to you.
Set an income goal.
I used to shy away from this step, telling myself that freelance work, or running my own business was too unpredictable and out of my control. Then I worked with a business coach, who encouraged me to pick a number that felt barely possible. Then work out what I needed to sell, what services I could provide in order to reach my target.
This was eye-opening for me, because it helped me see how often I was focussing on the wrong things – creating smaller items and services, instead of the big-ticket services that would increase my income rapidly – and relying on magical thinking to pay the bills.
It took a year for me to hit my ‘impossible’ target, doubling my income. Then I dedicated more time to building my mailing list and creating books, courses and other things I could offer without exchanging my time for money.
Money isn’t everything. But it really helps, and gives you more freedom to play with ideas that don’t have an immediate return. Or just to play!
Questions to help:
- What do you need to sell, or what services could you provide to reach your target?
- What audience/customers do you need to nurture?
- What do you need to develop in order to be more likely to reach this target next quarter?
How will your people find out about you?
Whatever you’re offering, you need a way to connect with your buyers, your audience, your ideal clients – and let them know what you’re making or offering. So what kind of marketing, connecting, educating do you need to do in order to get the success you want?
When setting your 90-day goal, choose something that’s in your control.
- You can’t control who says yes to your pitches or grant applications, but you can control how many you send out.
- You can’t make an agent, gallery, manager, or retail outlet say yes to supporting your work. But you can increase your chances of that yes significantly if you do some research, craft the right letter of introduction – then send it out to 20, 50, 100 people.
- You can control how many people see your website but you can build one, and put some basic content on it to start attracting your people – and seeing what interests them.
- You can’t control how many new commissions you get, but if you call up your contacts, share work you’ve done, and show your prospects why they need you with a talk or some educational blog posts, it’s far more likely that new work will roll in.
- You can’t control how many people follow you on social media, but you can choose to post a certain number of times a week for the next 90 days, then analyse which posts/channels were most successful so you can focus more on those, moving forward.
Decide what you want to create, in the next 90 days.
Money projects. Personal projects. New skills you want to develop. Experiments you want to run. For most creatives, there will always be more you want to do than you can actually do.
Be realistic. Don’t split your focus too much, or commit every waking second to work. We don’t have to do all of the things at once. Put some projects on the back burner, while you finish other things. Then you’ll have the bandwidth to give them the attention they deserve.
- Which projects are urgent, and have to be done now – or not at all?
- Which projects will move you forward the most: in terms of earnings, growth, skills, or anything else that’s important? Tune into your deep inner knowing, underneath all the shoulds, oughts and musts. Is a particular project tugging at you? Are you avoiding it from fear? What will you most regret NOT trying, when you’re looking back on your life in 10, 20, 30 years’ time?
- What, if it were done, would make everything else easier or unnecessary?
- What might be fun? Or satisfying? Or just a relief to have out of the way?
What do you want in your personal life?
Make sure you always have something to look forward to. If there was nothing in your calendar this quarter, plan something. Book it in. Buy tickets. Make arrangements with friends. If there’s nothing in your life but work and duty, you’ll soon burn out.
How are you taking care of you?
Make time for your health, for rest and play, for everything you need to be the best version of you.
Perhaps you want to set yourself a challenge for this 90 days: to meditate every morning, to do 100 squats or lunges throughout the day, read for 20 minutes every evening or just to find an exercise class you enjoy.
Again, make it something that is reasonably easy, and can slot into your existing routines. And once your 90 days is done, decide if you want to let go of it, or make some version of that permanent.
Who do you want/need to connect with?
Get clear on the relationships that matter most to you, and make time for them. Even on a busy week, you can connect with a friend, if only on a brief call. And keep making new friends, or touching base with clients, colleagues, people in your wider network.
It takes a minute to send someone a link to an article, video or resource they might find useful or interesting. Or to send a quick text or email, checking in and asking someone how they’re doing.
- What friendships or relationships need your attention?
- Do you have at least three events in your calendar this quarter when you’ll be connecting with friends – or going to an event where you might meet a new ally?
- Who lifts you up, inspires you, makes you laugh? And how can you spend more time with them?
- What support do you need, and how can you find that?
- Who do you need/want to know?
- Who could help you take your career to the next level? How can you get to know them, or deepen that relationship?
Handle the blocks, the bottlenecks, the stuff that drains you.
What gets in your way? I keep a running list of irritants. Broken items that need to be replaced or repaired. Software I could be using more effectively. Interruptions that make my working day longer. People or tasks that drain me. Things I’m constantly losing.
Each quarter, I pick three to focus on (one a month, usually). Then I set up systems or boundaries, get support, or make hard choices with the aim of either eliminating them entirely, or reducing the drag dramatically. Each one I get rid of creates less frustration, and more time for me to get on with the important stuff I want to do.
Not sure how to implement this? Jenny Blake’s book Free Time is a good place to start.
What else will get in my way, and how will I deal with it?
All of the usual gremlins will make their appearances this quarter. Fear. Procrastination. Perfectionism. Paralysis. Distraction.
Where are they most likely to show up for you? Is there anything you can do now, to head them off?
If not, decide now what you’ll choose to think and what actions you’ll choose to take when they show up. Writing this out, predicting how you’ll get in your own way and deciding in advance how you’ll respond doesn’t eliminate these nasties. But it reduces them enormously.
So that’s the outline of my quarterly planning.
You’ll no doubt have different questions, different metrics you’ll measure, perhaps other areas to you’d prefer to focus on. Take what you need, and adapt it to your own life and business.
But of course planning is only effective if it’s backed up with action. And it’s easy for big plans to get lost in day-to-day work and life’s inevitable interruptions and crises.
Once you’ve made your 90-day plan, write yourself a to-do list for week one. Mark time in your calendar to get those tasks done. Then check in with your plan at the end of each week, adding more tasks to your list so you make steady progress.
This is how we make giant leaps forward. One baby step at a time.
Isaac
Thanks, this was so needed!