My Guided Quarterly Review Process
One of my secrets to powerful goal accomplishment and building the career and life you have always dreamed of is to not only set big goals but then to check in, periodically, on the progress you are making. This includes a fresh intentional decision that you want to continue to pursue the goals you have been working toward. The beauty of doing a review like this every single quarter, or after a sprint of 12 strong weeks of effort toward your goal, is that it divides your year up into four smaller manageable chucks of time. Wait – four periods of 12 weeks of effort only adds up to 48 weeks. Yes – it is what you do in the 13th week of those four periods that makes all the difference. It is that 13th week where you will make your luck, so to speak. In this episode I am going to walk you through, step-by-step, what I do during that 13th week and how it will dramatically change your outcomes if you do the same.
My Productivity Journey
I have always had a strong work-ethic and as I have discussed in previous episodes of this podcast, a strong work-ethic and pure determination will take you a long way in your career. You know this, given the success you have already achieved in your own life and career. Eventually, I felt like I had hit a ceiling, and I am sure you can relate… I was working harder and longer than I ever did before and it felt like I was stuck in place, like I had gone as far as I could go. There were not enough hours in the day, there were not enough resources on my team, and there was no way I could scale the impact I was having without some type of dramatic change. Throughout the years I started to read productivity books, “The Best Year Ever” by Michael Hyatt, “The one thing” by Gary Keller, “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, etc. I learned a lot from these books and others, along with my own trial and error – I arrived at the way I actually do things today to keep myself on track and progressing toward my current set of goals, which are the building blocks to the bigger dream I 100% believe is possible for my life today.
Why is a Quarterly Review Important?
Do you do have goals? Maybe they are in your head, or if you are the high-achiever I know you are, you have them written down in a place you often review them. Ask yourself if you are making the progress that you expected to make when you make the goal in the first place? If you took the time to develop well-written goals, then you were very specific and included a clear definition of what “done” looks like for your goals and a clear time by which you would want to achieve the goal. If you have written your goals in this way, it quickly becomes clear if you have or have not made the progress you expected to make.
One challenge with the way most of us were taught to make goals is that we make “annual goals”. On a day like January first, you got your planner or your journal and you carefully wrote down five or more goals. You made a financial goal, a career goal, maybe a goal to lose 15 lbs, a goal to schedule more date-nights or quality time with your partner, and a goal to work out more often. By the end of January or mid-February – if you are honest with yourself, you are really only still working on two of the five, and even though you are making some progress – you still have days or even weeks where your progress feels unfocused and sporadic.
Given how motivated you are and how much energy you expend on a daily basis, you would love to make more progress toward what really matters to you. That is exactly the beauty of this review in the 13th week of your quarter. When you constrain your year down to one quarter at a time and when you focus on only one or two goals for 12 weeks straight, it is much easier to stay focused and to layout clear steps that will allow you to make progress – which will give you a very measurable result during that 13th week.
Here is my Quarterly Review Process
This is where we get to My guided quarterly review process, which I recommend you execute in the 13th week of your quarter. The rest of this episode will be laid out so that as I give you the next step, you can pause the audio while you take the action and then press play when you are ready to proceed. I also created a quick cheat-sheet .pdf that you can download and attach to the calendar reminder, if you want have something to refer to during your personal review.
The first step is to create a Reoccurring block of time on your calendar (your work calendar or your Google Calendar) to remind you that it is time to stop what you are doing and elevate your thinking and to review what has happened and to plan what you will do in the next 12-week period. Block off between 60 minutes to two hours for your review. You can always go more in-depth and take longer, there is no right way or wrong way to do this – it is more important that you actually do it, even if you have to do it faster for some reason. One hour is better than not doing it at all. Schedule the block to reoccur every 13 weeks at the same time. As the time nears, as you are doing weekly planning, you may need to adjust the day/time of your block – which is fine. Just make sure you move it to a time you will do it rather than skipping it completely. PROTIP: Copy the link to this podcast and enter it in the invitation in case you want a refresher during your process.
NOTE: I do use the Full Focus Planner, as my preferred planner and that is where I capture my review.
- Make sure you find a distraction-free place to do your planning. I also recommend that you find somewhere away from your normal work area or office. A change of scenery does wonders for your mind. Some ideas: An independently owned café with lots of lights and windows, a waterfront park, a greenspace or nature reserve, an airplane (if you have a trip scheduled – SO GOOD for uninterrupted time.) You get the idea…
- Bring your planner or journal and any office-supplies (colored pens, journal stickers, washi tape, etc. with you.)
- Set your do not disturb and consider a focus-app or play some music that focuses you. I have a “Forest” app that has multiple “background noise” options (like café noise, rain-forest, ocean/beach, etc…) This easily drowns out human voices and keeps me intensely focused.
- When you are situated, we are ready to begin.
- Capture the success you’ve had over the past 12 weeks. Literally make a list of the accomplishments you have had over this period. To help you remember this, you could review the notebooks you use to capture meeting actions and notes, scroll through your calendar and your planner. One place that really helps me is to scroll through my “Sent files” in my email. Your MS Project, Asana, Trello, or other Project management sw is a great place to remind you of what you have “finished”. Do you have habit-tracking apps or a habit-tracker in your planner? This is a great place to remind yourself how far you’ve come on a habit goal. Check your Peloton stats, ha ha – I know some of you are killing it there! You get the point, success and accomplishment is very personal to you and you will have to tailor where you find the reminders for you. Make sure you do this – very often we forget how much we really did do. Often high achievers complete one thing and then move on so fast to the next thing, that they actually forget what they did do. Capturing it like this gives you a quick place to review anytime you need to remember. 15 months from now when you are updating a resume or preparing an executive package, that future-you will be SO glad that you did this today.
- Refer to your written goals and measure success compared to what you wanted to accomplish. DO give yourself credit for any progress, even if you did not go as fast or make as much progress as you expected. Progress is progress! If there were five steps to your goal and you finished 2, you are still 40% closer to your goal than you were before you started. That is awesome!
- Separate from your actual accomplishments, what went well? Think about changes you wanted to make, think about processes you improved in your life, if you feel more confidant, etc. Maybe you found a way to adjust your work schedule that let’s you spend more time watching your son’s sporting events… think about all the parts of your life, not only your career. As you think back on what went well, think about if there were new actions or habits that you have started that were at the root of things going well. Is there any of these that you 100% want to keep doing in the future? Pause the audio and list all the things that went well for you in the last quarter.
- What did NOT go well? Think about all the same things you thought about for what went well. Think about your whole life, not just work. What did not go well? What would you improve? Why?
- Is there anything you did in the past quarter that you no longer want to do? Maybe there is a health reason, maybe it is a habit you want to stop, maybe there is a boundary you need to set with a family or friend.
- Review your task capture system and your notes over the past quarter. (You might call this a to-do list, but I know that a few of you have fairly robust task-capture systems.) Have you closed out all the tasks you have finished? If you have open tasks, do you still plan on doing them? If not – delete them / cross them off. Do not leave them open, this taxes your brain when you have to decide every time you read your tasks that you are still not going to do some of them. Are there tasks you noticed from your notes that needed to be captured in your task capture system? Do this now.
- In my coaching program, I have you develop a clear Career and Life vision. If you are alumni of my program, review that now. If you are interested in my six-week coaching program to go from “Underestimated to an Executive” I added a link to the waitlist in the comments. I open it a couple times a year – this is one way to make sure you are the first to know! Do you need to make any changes to your career and life plan?
- What are the next 2-4 goals you want to focus on, based on your yearly focus or your Career and Life plan? Choose between 1-3 goals that you are ready to intentionally focus on for the next 12 weeks.
- Write out detailed, specific goal statements for each of these 1-3 goals.
- To really drive success and accomplishment, list the next 8-10 steps for any goal you want to work on this quarter underneath the description of your goal. This will make it easy to know what you need to do on a daily and weekly basis to keep moving forward. Make the steps actionable and small enough that you can actually accomplish them and check them off… oh, that check-mark is sooo satisfying.
- Think about the next 13 weeks. Are there any milestones you need to prepare for? Family birthdays, holidays, project deadlines, vacations, trips, family milestones, transitions, speaking events, etc. Schedule time on your calendar for any of these that you are aware of and include a block of time ahead of time to do any prep-work required.
- If you have found that there are some things that you want to stop or start, do you need to adjust any of your morning, evening, work stop or start routines?
One other great idea to do in this 13th week, depending on your schedule and if you have kids – their school schedule, is to take some down time during this 13th weeks. Even if it is just a staycation – rejuvenate your soul. Free your mind to make sure that you are still dreaming. A great way to make sure this happens is to plan it now for the next quarterly planning session, 13 weeks from now.
At this point, if you conducted all or most of these steps – you have completed a very robust quarterly review.
Planning Becomes a Way of Life
If you become a person who makes this planning process a way of life, it will get easier and easier the more you do it and it will start to look to others like you are “lucky” like good things just flow your way. Success will start to seem, “easy”. You won’t feel stuck, you’ll make consistent progress, you’ll start to believe that you can accomplish anything you set your mind on and you’ll consistently become more and more confidant due to the amount of success you create in your life.
Remember, save this episode so you can do the process again in 13 weeks. I’ll always be here to help you through it so you can become the most powerful version of yourself!
Happy reviewing my friend, let me know how it goes!
SHOW NOTES:
One of my secrets to powerful goal accomplishment and building the career and life you have always dreamed of is to not only set big goals but then to check in periodically on the progress you’re making. This includes a fresh intentional decision that you want to continue to pursue the goals you have been working toward. It’s what you do in the 13th week that makes all the difference. It’s that 13th week when you make your luck, so to speak. In this episode, I will walk you through, step-by-step, what I do during that 13th week and how it will dramatically change your outcomes if you do the same.
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