How I Want to Prep For a New Month and Quarter

It’s been a long time since I have done any sort of particular monthly or quarterly “life routine”: something I consistently do to feel like my life is on track.

I’ve always been a naturally plan-oriented person, but for the last few years I let that part of myself go a little bit. I did that intentionally to help myself recover from a massive burnout I hit during the pandemic in 2020.

I needed the time I took to just let myself exist. To not set huge goals, to not be constantly working on new things, and to not be constantly trying to evolve and one-up myself.

But I am now at the point where that level of just existing is turning into more of a negative thing. I have found my drive again! I feel more honed in on what really matters to me and what I want to achieve in the next few years of my life.

Bringing those achievements to fruition requires a lot more specified focus than I’ve used in the last few years. And so far that has been really exciting! And incredibly rewarding.

At the beginning of this year, I did not set any specific goals for the first quarter or any deadlines for myself. I wanted to just lean into feeling passionate about something again and for the last few months, that has worked wonders for me.

But I am now in the phase of knowing that I can build on these passions consistently, and needing to turn that consistency into a solid plan.

So I am working to “reset” myself for this new month coming and an entirely new quarter for the year.

I am genuinely so excited about what this new time of year could bring. Yes, it is partially because spring is my favorite season, but it’s also because I think with renewed focus, the possibilities of what could come to fruition are insane.

There’s a number of things I want to try to do for this reset and I figured I would explain why I chose to include each of these in this post. This coming Sunday, I will have a video up on my YouTube channel actually doing all these reset activities, so be sure you are subscribed to see that!

Without further ado, let’s get into why I am doing each of these activities for a monthly and quarterly reset.

Ensure My Calendar Is Completely Up to Date

I have a habit of knowing that, for example, when I schedule doctor’s appointments, they will be in MyChart and I will get an email notification about them. So I don’t immediately add them to my calendar, especially if it’s not already open in front of me.

Pretty much anything that has an email reminder or someone else in charge of it, I will inevitably just not add to my calendar likely until the week of. I am freakishly good at remembering dates of things, so I am not worried about forgetting events entirely. But I do like to have a visual of my schedule so I can be aware of how my workflows need to shift any given week.

I want to take literally five minutes and ensure that everything for the upcoming month (and farther out, if possible) is on my calendar so when I go to create my content calendar (see below) or plan things with friends in advance, I know exactly what’s going on.

Ideally, I would update this immediately when things are scheduled but….one thing at a time, lol.

Review First (or Previous) Quarter

I have always struggled with doing reviews each month, quarter and year, but I think that is mostly because I follow templates that have a lot of questions or general phrasings that don’t vibe with me.

Questions like, “How was I gentle with myself this month?” make me feel like I am talking to someone else. I just don’t speak in that way, so when I find review templates like that I feel like I can’t connect with them. So I just don’t do them.

Instead, I want to ask myself questions more simply like, “How did I work on my goals this past quarter?” or, “How did I fuck around and find out how creative I could be, and what results did I get?” or, “What’s something cool that happened this month?”

Basically, a bit more humor and more straightforward questions work for me.

At this point, I don’t find value in doing reviews like this once every month. I think I spend so much time in my own head already that going out of my way to do reviews that often feels redundant. But doing them once a quarter feels like a good middle ground. There’s enough time for things to start to fall out of my immediate thought and for bigger changes to become noticed.

More or less, I want to look at each general category of my life and ask some basic questions, just to get the gears rolling. Inevitably, I will have more to say and then I won’t even have to think about any specific questions before a whole review is brought to life.

I think I will start by taking the topics in the wheel of life LOOSELY and translate them to my current life. And go from there!

Identify My Main Priorities For the Quarter

I am someone that is constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY, finding new things to be interested in, new things to try, new things to buy, and new adventures to go on. That’s all fine and dandy, but it does ultimately create a bit of grief internally when I don’t know what to focus on.

Something I want to get better at is focusing on specific priorities for specific periods of time. There is absolutely nothing wrong with finding new things to be excited about, but I want to simply make note of them and re-evaluate later on.

You don’t have to research very long to find the value of focus, especially when it comes to big goals you have in life. I am not immune to that value, as much as I would like to believe as much. Learning how to make and stick to priorities will likely be hugely beneficial for me.

At the end of the day, I don’t want to shift priorities without thinking it through. Read that again: it’s not that I will never change priorities ever, but I want to do so with reason and intent.

I can already tell you that my biggest priority is getting my bookstore off the ground, but after that, what comes next? What do I have the time for? What priorities am I okay with not getting to, if worst comes to worst?

Identifying these priorities will be a whole new experience for me - especially keeping them top of mind consistently - but it’s one I want to dive into!

Set Goals For the Quarter

Again, I find that setting goals monthly feels a little too restrictive to me. I have a long history with abusing myself with goal setting, so I am wary of putting them back into my life as often as once a month.

But looking at setting new goals once per quarter feels like a good plan to me.

I want to base new goals off of what my priorities are for the quarter, hence why I want to establish those first. Setting goals that align with what most matters to you creates a hierarchy of what needs addressed first. And that makes you feel more accomplished!

I do not want to create more than maybe five goals because, again, I have a bad history with goal setting. (I’m talking once, a number of years ago, I gave myself 32 yearly goals. You read that right: 32. Yearly. Goals.) Setting only a few feels like a good way to ease back into trying to accomplish them.

If I land above and beyond those five(ish) and achieve more? Great! But I don’t want to set myself up for failure with insanely high expectations. That’s a personal habit that has taken me years to even recognize, let along unravel, so I’m trying to go easy on myself.

You’d think this wouldn’t be so tough, but trust me, for a chronic over-achiever such as myself, it is.

Update My Notion: Habit Tracker, Cleaning Tracker, and My To-Do List

I finally got my Notion pretty close to my ideal state in the first quarter of this year, which is really exciting. (Hell, I’m even writing this blog post in Notion! No more Google Sheets! Hurrah!) I think continuing to use it will be fairly easy for me, but I want to make sure i don’t fall behind.

I have a monthly habit tracker I use and want to reset - again, looking at how the habits relate to my priorities. I use a monthly and quarterly cleaning schedule (spring cleaning, anyone?) that I will need to address and make sure is included in my monthly plan.

The biggest thing is how I organize my brain dump/to-do list. I have it labeled as my to-do list, but it really is more like a big brain dump. It’s just organized in a particular way.

Any time I think of literally anything I need or want to do, I put it in this list. Whether it’s something small and necessary (wash my hair) or big and is something for years down the line (go to this big book festival in the UK), it goes on this list.

I then organize all items by when they need reviewed. If it’s something I know I’ll need to do tomorrow, then I will just put a due date on it and it will show up on my main dashboard. But let’s say it’s a bigger “want,” like that UK book festival - I will check the box that says this needs reviewed quarterly. It’s not something I know will be immediately relevant to me, but I want to review it each quarter because a LOT can happen in three months! You never know what may become relevant to you in that time.

I have categories for what needs reviewed quarterly, monthly and weekly. Ultimately, which box gets checked just depends on the item. I have a pretty solid idea of when things will be generally relevant to me, so this is fairly easy to fill out.

What my to-do list database looks like with the various checkboxes of when to review items

But at the beginning of this new quarter and month, I will review each of the items in those categories. Is there something in the “review quarterly” box that could now be relevant to one of the upcoming months? Is there something in the “review monthly” box that could now be relevant to one of the next few weeks? If yes, then I change the boxes over.

I continue that pattern until eventually I am working through bigger tasks on my to-do list, one at a time.

And again, I will keep my priorities in mind for this project so I am not focusing on something that isn’t immediately important.

Evaluate Screen Time

I will admit that my screen time has gone WAY up in the first quarter of this year, and I know why. But seriously - it’s so hard to get screen time down, even with that knowledge. It’s actually insane, lol.

I was talking with my boyfriend the other day on how to manage screen time, because not only is it just bad for my brain, but I think it’s also slowly killing my eyeballs. And I have the unfortunate luck of working at a computer for 8 hours a day, and then come home and work at another screen for another 5+ hours each night.

I want to find ways to limit that screen time as much as I can. Yes, I need to look at screens to do my job and work on my passions, but do I ALSO need to have my phone open in front of me waiting for someone to text me back?

Why, no. No I don’t. So glad you asked.

It’s examples like the above that make me want to re-evaluate this.

So much screen time across multiple devices is bad for my eyes, bad for my attention span, bad for my focus, and ultimately makes me feel like shit because I’m not able to get as much done as I’d like. And I do it to myself!

I am working on a lot of really big goals, and I need focus and productivity to be at the top of their game if I want to see these things come to fruition. Unnecessary screen time is only hindering me.

Review Analytics For the Month

This is pretty easy to explain, and you’ve probably heard a content creator somewhere out there on the internet talk about this. But it is important!

Obviously, when you’re trying to grow a platform, knowing what is working and what isn’t is insanely important. Figuring out how to market well is a hard skill to develop, but invaluable once it’s there.

I want to take a look at the analytics for my blog, my YouTube AND my bookstore platforms so I know how to improve them for the next chunk of time! (See below.)

What is even more important to me, though, is that I want to develop the habit of not paying much attention to my analytics UNTIL I do the review of them monthly.

I have a nasty habit of checking the analytics for a piece of content what feels like every five minutes for updates, because I want that immediate gratification of knowing that something is performing well.

But you know what that habit stops you from doing? CREATING.

I got into writing and videos again for the purpose of fulfilling my creative drive. I don’t want to waste that energy on creeping on my stats and feeling bummed out when I don’t find what I want. Because to tell you the truth: most of the time, what I create does not immediately perform well LOL. Sometimes it’s just not a piece of content that resonates with people, or it takes time to find its traction.

For my personal brand, what matters first and foremost is that I am enjoying the process of creating.

For my bookstore, what matters first and foremost is that I am developing as much of a positive impact as I can.

Analytics matter a bit more to me for my bookstore because that is a business, but I don’t want to be solely driven by analytics. I started my bookstore because I feel extremely passionate about its mission, and I want that to be the heart of it all.

Reviewing analytics just once a month gives me the opportunity to stay in touch with what is working and develop better ideas to move forward, without drowning in those thoughts day in and day out.

Plan Content Creation Calendar For the Month

This is where reviewing analytics has HUGE benefit!

Planning content in advance can involve many different factors, including regular things happening in your life, holidays, current events and more.

Having an idea of your previous analytics also plays a huge role in this. You can get an idea of what your audience resonates with and what is gaining traction, and build off that to continue making new content.

When you look at your analytics just once per month and plan new content off that in the same session, it feels a lot more creatively fulfilling than trying to think of new content as you’re posting content based off analytics that are barely in existence yet.

You feel me?

Planning content in advance also helps me with scheduling my creative workflow so I know what the week ahead looks like. I have a standard outline I follow, but that is almost never the exact same week to week. You have other events in your life that make it so your standard timeline almost always fails, so knowing how to adjust for those things in advance can make you feel WAY less stressed.

Make a List of Things to Look Forward to For the Quarter

This is a new thing I am trying, and I honestly just thought of it when I outlined this post. It occurred to me after a particularly rough adventure into what happens when a post of yours goes semi-viral lol (more on that next week.)

But I think doing this has potential to be invaluable. I honestly want to write this list on a giant dry erase board and hang it right above my desk. Or on my bathroom mirror. Or somewhere where I will see it 100 times a day.

I don’t pride myself on this, but I am rather skilled at pessimism. Truthfully, I can go into pessimism-overkill when it comes to my own life.

Someone else’s? I’ll find the silver lining all day! But my own? Well, that’s all downhill from here, baby.

I know that resolving that fun little habit of mine will likely take years of practice, but every bit counts.

So I want to ask myself a simple question: what am I looking forward to?

Is it something huge, like bringing a big goal to life? Is it smaller, like going on a coffee date with my boyfriend? Is it celebrating a birthday with someone I love? Is it the change of seasons? Trying a new coffee recipe?

Spoiler alert, it’s all of those, lol. And much more!

But already just writing that short list I genuinely feel better after the insane couple of days I’ve had. I think having a designated list I can refer to and maybe even reflect on will keep me from tottering off the pessimism edge. Yay, mental health!

Pick a Day Once Per Month to Stay Offline

I, like the rest of the world, spend a lot of time on the internet. And while I think I have a generally good grip on my usage of it in the context of what I do, it can still be extremely overwhelming.

I think taking one day once per month to completely disconnect from the internet would do wonders for my mental health. A day when I don’t open any social media apps, I don’t respond to any comments, I don’t go digging into something that will inevitably piss me off, I don’t watch any hilarious videos my friends send me….none of it. Just a day where I read my book, clean my house, write a story, or hell, even lay and watch the clouds roll by.

There probably isn’t a single person with easy access to the internet that would think this is a bad idea, so I don’t feel like I need to explain it too much. But taking one day to remember what it’s like to just be a human in a world that is full of tiny miracles feels like a pretty solid investment into my sanity.

Nothing will crash and burn with my being off the internet for one day. (And if it does, maybe it’s meant to be, honestly.) I can plan ahead for things, like scheduling content in advance or pre-filming or whatever the situation calls for.

I’m honestly so excited for a day like this. I want to set a designated time right now.

What Are You Doing to Reset for the Month and Quarter?

Tell me in the comments below: are you doing anything in particular to reset for this new month and season? Are you doing anything similar to my list above? I’d love to know!