Daily planning, followed by daily doing, leads to success.
Most people find it easier to set goals than to achieve them, but daily doing is where the rubber meets the road. The iCreateDaily brand is built on the foundation of daily planning and creating because of the incredible power of that core habit toward helping you achieve your dreams.
It is in the doing that we become.
It is in the becoming that we discover ourselves.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®
Table of Contents:
- Daily planning, followed by daily doing, leads to success.
- Daily Planning for Simplicity and Productivity
- Annual to Daily Goals, and Back Again
- Annual Planning
- Quarterly Planning – Your 90 Day Macro Goals
- Monthly Planning
- Weekly Planning
- Daily Planning
- The Power of Repetition
- Organize and Prioritize – Daily
- Quarterly to Daily Planning – 90-30-7-1
Audio Article – Daily Planning:
Got Big Dreams?
It’s easy to get caught up in the complexity of overplanning and overthinking what we need to do, especially when you have big goals and dreams. This is where daily planning steps in and takes the reins of your day.
Daily planning keeps your focus goal in sight while progressing through daily tasks and tweaks in a steadily refining process of learning, growth and achievement. Each day builds on the one before in a steady progression of steps and tweaks.
A well planned day leads to a well-planned life.
Some people struggle with identifying goals to set. The good news is that—as with anything else—the more you do it the easier it gets. You can simply start daily planning for achieving your goals by beginning at the end.
How to set goals? Begin at the end.
Your daily plan becomes the compass pointing to your destination.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®
Daily Planning for Simplicity and Productivity
The more you plan and do… plan and do… the more you get done. The more you get done, the more you’ll want to plan, and the more efficient you become at it.
There are many things in life that are super simple, yet hard to do. Knowing what to do is not the same as doing it. Knowing how to exercise is not the same as getting fit. Same thing with your goals.
The day becomes the year… becomes the life. The day is the way.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®
Annual to Daily Goals, and Back Again
No matter whether you’re planning your day, your year or your life, the process is very much the same. It’s just a matter of micro or macro perspectives.
The big picture of your year is divided by four consecutive quarters. The quarters are then broken down sequentially into months, and the months into weeks.
The macro of daily planning is to consider the week and what needs to happen to achieve your goals for the week. Then each day, reflect on the big picture of the day. Assess and assign what needs to happen today toward achieving your goal/s for the week. That becomes your day’s goal/s.
Your life is made up of the days of your years.
Don’t make planning a big deal… just a big priority. Start simply by planning each day. If you need a goals journal, please check out the iCreateDaily 90 Day Goals Journals.
Start simply, so that you may simply start.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®
Annual Planning
To formulate your yearly goal, ask yourself:
“Where do I want to be by year’s end?”
“By the end of this year I will have accomplished…”
Then ask yourself:
“What steps must I take this year to achieve that goal?”
Make a list of everything that comes to mind. Don’t worry about editing by order or priority or organization. You can refine that later. When you work on quarterly planning, you can sort this list into quarters.
For more on annual planning, we expand on that in this article on annual goals as well.
Quarterly Planning – Your 90 Day Macro Goals
Quarterly planning is where you get to work from the Annual Goals list you created earlier. Use your year’s goals to add to and refine your quarterly goals.
To formulate your quarterly goals, ask:
“Where do I want to be in 90 days?”
“By the end of this quarter I will have accomplished…”
Then ask:
“What steps must I take this quarter to achieve that goal?”
Using your annual goals list, add anything else that comes to mind. Next, you’ll break this down further.
QUARTERLY PLANNING PROCESS – MACRO GOALS:
- Go through your annual goals list:
- identify the top 1-4 macro things that need to happen first toward your annual goals.
- Number those in order of priority.
- Those priority items become your next set of quarterly goals.
- Next you’ll break them into monthly goals, planning one month at a time.
90 Day Planning Tips
From your quarterly planning page, you can write the initial of the month next to the items on your list that you think you’ll accomplish in that month. This is based on which month you think you will focus on those goals.
Next, write your monthly planning sheets from that quarterly list, allocating which goals go into which months. E.g.,
- J for January
- F for February
- M for March
- Etc.,
Once you’ve decided your top three goals, you can write the respective goals on your monthly goals lists. However, in some weeks and months you may get more done than you had planned, and vice versa. So it’s helpful to pencil in your subsequent months, then edit to update it as you go.
QUARTERLY PLANNING TIP:
iCreateDaily 90 Day Goals Journal, iCreateDaily.com
Pencil in your 1-4 macro goals for subsequent months of your quarter to allow for adjustments as you work through each month. Edit and ink it before you begin it.
You may have one or more big goal per month. Or you could end up with four slightly smaller goals that correlate to one goal for each week of the month.
The size of your quarterly and monthly goals will determine the number of monthly and weekly goals you have, which is why we recommend penciling in your subsequent month’s goals planning. As you work through your current month, you can more easily assess what to add to the future months.
You may benefit by our quarterly goals journal and planner. You can download a free 30-day pdf here.
This can sound abstract to explain without a visual, so here’s a sample of our 90 Day Goals Journal quarterly planning page:
Success is planning and consistent hard work over time. And it’s so worth it. No one ever regrets success… just not trying.
~LeAura Alderson, Cofounder-iCreateDaily.com
Monthly Planning
To formulate your monthly goal, ask:
“Where do I want to be by month’s end?”
“By the end of this month I will have accomplished…”
This is where you can assess and confirm that the goals you’ve identified in your quarterly plan are still a fit for your monthly goals.
Then ask:
“What steps must I take this month to achieve that goal?”
Make a list of everything that comes to mind. Next, break this month into four weeks of goals in the same way you broke your quarter down into three months of goals.
We expand on 30 day goal setting in this article on monthly goals.
Successful creators visualize their goal, set the goal, and work and refine it daily. Success is not magic or miracles, it is simply focused effort, consistently, over time.
~LeAura Alderson, Cofounder-iCreateDaily.com
Weekly Planning
To formulate your weekly goal, ask:
“Where do I want to be by week’s end?”
“By the end of this week I will have accomplished…”
Then ask:
“What steps must I take this week to achieve that goal?”
“Which of these tasks will move you closer to your goal?”
These become your weekly goals, which will be broken down further into daily tasks.
Contentment lives in the hours of a day well spent.
The well-spent day becomes the well lived life.
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com®
Daily Planning
To formulate your daily goal, ask yourself:
“Where do I want to be by day’s end?”
“By the end of today I will have accomplished…”
Then ask yourself:
“What steps must I take today to achieve that goal?”
Make a list of everything that comes to mind. These become your daily goals. We also expand on daily planning in this article on setting setting daily goals.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
~Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, 1813-1855
The Power of Repetition
Now repeat this goal setting process all the way down the line, to your own daily planning. And remember, don’t let the simplicity fool you. Some of the most important things we do, happen repetitively, perpetually, and often simply. For example:
- Breathing
- Brushing teeth
- Exercise
- Eating
- Sleeping
- Bathing
- Laughing
- Loving
…all simple yet essential parts of a well balanced day… and a well-balanced life. It’s the same thing with planning! Like reps at the gym… there is strength in repetition.
Success comes from learning, planning and creating. The power lies in daily doing.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com
Organize and Prioritize – Daily
NOW… once you have your macro and micro lists, the next layer process is to organize them in order of priority. To help you hone in on planning your daily goals is to ask focusing questions.
To identify your daily goal, ask yourself:
“What is the most important thing I can focus on today to move my business forward?”
The 90 Day Goals Journal to makes this entire process easier.
Your goal is where you want to go. Your daily tasks are the route you’ll take.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily 90 Day Goals Journal
Quarterly to Daily Planning – 90-30-7-1
- 90 Days – Quarterly Planning
- 30 Days – Monthly Planning
- 7 Days – Weekly Planning
- 1 Day – Daily Planning
If your 90 day goal is to start a podcast, that’s your end goal, that gets broken down into smaller and smaller steps. By the time you end up with weekly and daily goals, it might start off looking something like this example of someone starting a podcast as a side gig.
90 DAY GOAL PLANNING EXAMPLE:
- Start a podcast
Weekly Planning Example:
WEEK 1 – GOALS & TASKS
- Market Research
- Identify audience profile
- Ideate topics & guests
- Competitive market
- Industry podcasts – minimum of 5
- Podcast Name/URL
- Select domain name and registrar
- Purchase domain name
- Podcast Site Development
- Research Podcast Hosting platforms
- monthly costs
- does it include site builders
- other support systems included
- Explore Site Designs for style preferences
- Plan Podcast Site Development – design, content & ideas
- Research Podcast Hosting platforms
Daily Planning Examples
MONDAY – Podcast Research & Domain Name
- Market Research:
- Listen to one genre podcast during drive time*
- Visit that podcasts website
- Brainstorm podcast names for my podcast
- Search for closest available domain name
- Sleep on it and decide tomorrow
TUESDAY – Registrar, Podcast and Domain name
- Decide on podcast/domain name closest to my first choice
- Research and decide which registrar company to use, (we use Epik)
- Purchase domain name
WEDNESDAY – Podcast Hosting & Site Design Research
- Research podcast hosting platforms
- Identify podcast site designs I like
THURSDAY – Podcast Site Development
- Contact podcast website platform to schedule a call
- Start a document on the site elements I want
- Identify menu categories for my podcast site
- Consider whether to include a blog
FRIDAY – Podcast Development
- Start a list of topics I’d like to produce for my podcast
- Start a list of guests I’d like to interview
Begin at the end and work your way backward. Decide where you want to be in the end. This works for every area of life… the end of today… the end of this year… the end of your life, and all the various “ends” in between. This is not morbid, this is essential, dynamic and positively proactive.
If starting big is overwhelming, then start with the day. The great thing about daily planning is that it’s bite sized and manageable.
*Drive Time = Learn Time
I listen to industry relevant podcasts, audiobooks and YouTube interviews while getting ready in the mornings and at bedtime, when driving and also during menial tasks. Stimulating, interesting and informative audio resources help to keep my mind focused on my goals even when my eyes or hands are occupied, and are great for generating all kinds of ideas action plans.
So if your goal is to start a podcast, then tune into podcasts on podcasts, as well as other podcasts in your industry or genre of interest.
We started the iCreateDaily Podcast in 2017 using this process.
Daily planning keeps your hands on the wheel of the journey to your goals.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily 90 Day Goals Journal
You can get your free digital 30 Day PDF iCreateDaily Journal here, or the full 90 Day Goals Journal.
A movement for creators serious about their work.
The Day is the Way.
iCreateDaily!™
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Hello! I’m LeAura, owner and co-creator of iCreateDaily.com®. As an autodidactic philosopher, generalist, personal development advocate, entrepreneur, writer, editor, author, ideator, media publisher, and podcaster, I’m passionate about helping others achieve their best possible life! Our small family of entrepreneurs, writers, investors, educators and creators own and run websites around topics we enjoy, such as gardening, health and fitness, creativity and pets, with more to come.
While my greatest teacher is Life… my formal training includes certifications in mediation, fitness, and strategic intervention coaching, including marriage and family. Today, the synergy of creating websites, articles and podcasts, brings together all my favorite things: family, learning, growth, creating, connecting and contributing. To share these with you is a privilege, that serves my lifelong aspiration to help others.
My personal areas of creativity are in writing, masterminding, ideation, synthesis and bringing ideas to life through business and entrepreneurship, all with a pervasive spiritual foundation with a focus on elevating the lives of others.
Want to submit your photos, videos and/or article content for publication? We love to consider your contribution for publication! creators@icreatedaily.com