30K Foot Schedule View
Recently I talked about setting up your new month schedule, but just this past week I worked with two clients to zoom out even more because there was still some overwhelm with how much there was.
So, if it was needed for them I thought you may benefit!
One did it with planning their marketing and one used it to plan for travel and events, so this can be whatever it needs to be for you. It’s more the framework and the questions than what you’re actually planning.
Ready to zoom all the way out?
I'm going to pretend I'm a retail space to work through this:
1. Snag a pen/pencil and paper or Google Doc and write out the 12 months with some space in between.
2. The questions I'd start asking to start entering in information are:
- what are the major holidays/seasons that we do an event or big push for? Valentine's Day, Spring, Summer, 4th of July, End of the summer to make room for fall, back to school, Fall, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas
3. Put those events in the month that they will happen:
- February: Valentine's Day
- March: Spring
- May: Summer
- July: 4th of July
- August: end of summer sale and back to school
- September: Fall
- November: Black Friday and Cyber Monday
- December: Christmas
4. Now start breaking down each event/season:
- Valentine's Day: any special product ordering? How long does it take me to research? When do I want it by? How long is shipping? When do I need to order? When do I want to start marketing for it? How long will I market it and where?
5. As I answer those questions I'll put those into the month working backwards:
- If Valentine's Day is in February, when do I want to start marketing? January
- If I start marketing in January I need the actual products by mid/late January.
- If I need the products by mid/late January how long is shipping? 2 weeks
- If it takes 2 weeks to order I need to order the first of January.
- If I need to order by the first of January how long do I need to research? 1 week
- If I need 1 week to research then I need to start that in December.
So for Valentine's Day, you need to put "start researching for Valentine's Day in December. And in my mind, I'm thinking...December is craziness, so maybe I should give myself a little cushion :)
6. Go back to your months and add in those times:
- January: Valentine's Day: order items, receive items, start marketing items
- February: Valentine's Day: market items
- March: Spring
- May: Summer
- July: 4th of July
- August: end of summer sale and back to school
- September: Fall
- November: Black Friday and Cyber Monday
- December: Christmas, start researching for Valentine's Day
Do you see how if you go through and do that for each season and holiday you'll start to fill in your months and your task list will really start to create itself?
I love doing this because it not only removes alllll of this information from your brain to give you some relief, but it also gives you more of an opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive.
This exercise can really be done at any time as you can plan an overview of the year and work through each project/launch/holiday/vacation that you have coming up. You'll just work backward instead of forwards!
Does that help? I sure hope so as it's magical when you can start seeing where things will land to then start getting into the daily/weekly details.