Last week, I did a quarterly review & planning session. To be able to focus on my review, I rented a room at a local desert resort and planned to spend two days working on only my review.
I find it helpful to leave my normal surroundings to be able to give total focus to a special project. I’m distracted less and there’s nothing else to compete for my focus. That’s not to say that you can’t do a review at your office or home.
The Basis for a Reflection & Planning Session
For me, the basis for every review & planning session is my life roles-based system. Following the guidelines of David Sparks, a couple of years ago I identified my life roles, then wrote an ideal description of what my excellent behavior would look like in each of those roles.
After evaluating each role, I had a clear sense of purpose and intention for each area of my life. Out of this process also grew action items, which resulted in new tasks and habits.
Every week, I do a brief review of each life role to evaluate how I’m doing in living up to my ideal behaviors. I note where I’m doing well, and where I need improvement. These weekly reviews remind me of my intentions and help to keep me on course.
The Guide For a Quarterly Reflection and Planning Session
While brief weekly reviews are helpful, I found that doing a comprehensive quarterly review is valuable. In the next section of this post, I’ll discuss some of the benefits I experienced.
To do a quarterly review and planning session, you require a guide to follow. I used David Sparks’ Mid-Year Reflection and Planning blog post as the basis for my process. Although it is titled “mid-year,” I’ve found it works equally well for quarterly reviews.
In this post, he divides the process into two major sections, reflection, and planning. In reality, most of my planning was suggested by and developed out of the reflection I did.
First, he recommends a roles audit in which you think deeply about each of your life roles and answer the questions, How am I doing? Where can I get better? Where am I doing good?
Next, the focus is on reflecting on the challenges you’ve dealt with in the past quarter and anticipating the challenges likely to come up in the next quarter. The point of the questions here is to learn from the past and use that knowledge to plan for the future.
In the next section, the goal is to review your projects and habits for the last quarter. Again, the focus is on learning from your experiences and applying that to your future planning.
By the time I got to the planning section, I found I’d already done most of my planning. As Sparks says, “If you did all of the above, the planning part is easy. Now you know where the role changes are needed, the challenges to be faced down, the projects and habits to nurture. Now go do it.”
A Template for a Quarterly Reflection and Planning Session
Even if you choose to use David Spark’s mid-year guide, you’ll still need to plan how you’re going to stay on track and record your answers to each question.
You could do it with paper and pencil in a notebook, but making corrections and changes could easily result in a mess. Although it looks like a linear process, you’ll likely find yourself jumping back and forth to revise answers as new thoughts come to you.
I found that an electronic template worked best for me. I used Craft to set up a Quarterly Reflection & Planning template that I could use for this review, and also use in the future. You can find my template here. I’ve had to sanitize it to remove my more personal information, but you’ll have enough to get you started.
To use my template you’ll have to change the life roles categories to your own life roles categories. I use a system of bullet points to list my excellent behaviors in each role. I then answer my questions based on those bullet points. Note in my template I’ve used different colors to group life roles; green is for my relationships, blue is for my work, orange is for my personal areas.
I used a lot of collapsing paragraphs, especially where there were several questions under a heading. That helped me to keep a clean-looking template while still having easy access to all the questions.
You can use whatever app you’re comfortable with. I used Craft because it was easy to set up, and it’s aesthetically pleasing (rather than all plain text, which is often ugly). Feel free to use my template as a model for whatever works for you. Keep in mind you’ll lose all the color and blocks if you use most plain text apps, like Obsidian.
I filled in my answer to each question directly under the question, indented. I highlighted any action items in yellow. As I was working on a section, I would add new tasks to the inbox of my task manager, Things. I added and removed habits from the Streaks app.
Although I used David Sparks’ post as a guide, I also modified it by adding my questions. In my filing system, I keep folders of active projects and projects on hold. I added questions to prompt me to review both of these folders and decide if I needed to delete projects, put active projects into holding status, or move holding projects to active projects.
The Benefits of Doing a Quarterly Reflection and Planning Session
Frankly, I’ve found doing a quarterly review and planning session was more beneficial than I expected it to be. Here are some of the benefits I found:
- The 12-week period makes all of my planning much more practical. When you only have 12 weeks to plan for, I have to be more realistic about what I can accomplish during that time. I’d done 6-month reviews in the past, but found 12-week reviews made me much more realistic and increased my motivation to get to work.
- When I’m looking at a 6-month or 12-month period, it’s easier for me to assign future me much more work than I’ll actually be able to accomplish. It sounds like an almost infinite period of time and leads to unrealistic planning. Working with a shorter time meant delaying projects I thought I wanted to complete before the end of the year. I realized it was biting off too much to include them this upcoming quarter.
- A 12-week period is much more motivational for me than a longer period. The limited time makes me realize that if I’m going to get the things done that I’d like to do, I better get busy. There’s no time for procrastinating and putting it off.
- A 12-week period forces me to plan my schedule in more detail. To ensure I’ll get done what I want, I need to do some time-blocking on my calendar.
- When I’m looking at a 6-month or 12-month period, it’s easier for me to assign future me much more work than I’ll actually be able to accomplish. It sounds like an almost infinite period of time and leads to unrealistic planning. Working with a shorter time meant delaying projects I thought I wanted to complete before the end of the year. I realized it was biting off too much to include them this upcoming quarter.
- Working through my template helps me to focus on my past, my present, and my future. It gives me a comprehensive view of my work and prompts me to learn lessons from my past difficulties, and apply those lessons to my present and future self.
- Using a roles-based system prompts me to look at all the areas of my life, not just my work. This helps me to keep my life in proper balance.
- Although I usually do a brief roles review each week, I found doing a comprehensive reflection and planning session sparked my thinking at a deeper level about each of my roles. I made some significant changes in my tasks and habits and did the most realistic planning I’ve ever done. I needed a significant chunk of time when I could focus all my attention on reflection and planning.
Following Up and Moving Forward
It’s only been a few days since completing my quarterly reflection and planning. Now, I plan to set an afternoon aside to review all of my answers to see if there’s a need for revisions or additions. I’m sure my subconscious brain has continued to work on them.
Next, I need to process my task manager in-box. I’ll need to block out times in my calendar to work on the tasks I’ve assigned myself and set up any recurring reminders required.
Finally, I plan to review my Quarterly Reflection & Planning Template to see if any changes or additions are needed. I want to continually improve it based on my experience, so it will be ready to serve me again in 13 weeks.
If you haven’t done a process like this before, I encourage you to schedule the time and give it a try. If it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it again. I think you’ll likely find it very helpful, as I have.
I would especially encourage you to try a 12-week process, rather than the more popular yearly or mid-year approaches. I think you’ll find, as I did, that it makes your planning (and reflection) much more practical. For more information about planning on a 12-week basis, see the excellent book by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington, The 12 Week Year.
Don’t be afraid to make whatever modifications you feel are needed to craft the process to your needs. There is not one way to do this.
Bonus: Sample of Filled-in Questions From My Template:
