Gearing up for Q2 – Quarterly planning and HB90
The day I found quarterly planning everything changed. To be more specific the HB90 quarterly planner.
The HB stands for Heart Breathings which is the brain child of Sarra Cannon.
HB90 Planner background
Originally meant for writers and project-based planners: Sarra guides you through a process of creating a vision, ideal day dreaming then she walks you through task management by looking at the things taking up mental space using three lists: Need to do, Should do and Want to do.
Then Sarra helps you prioritize your lists using a priority box (similar to the Eisenhower Matrix but more project based).
Then streamline the lists until you have a focused list of important tasks that you want to work on for the next quarter. Then comes the part that I absolutely LOVE – the Task Blocks set up and Time Estimator process.
It is essentially looking at your week to see what time you have available for working on your goals. I started by putting in my full time job then sleep and then meal times. Then I looked at all the available time leftover and realised that even with a full time job I have a LOT of time available to work on things like blogging, cleaning and even carve out self-care time. This is what changed the game for me. I could visually see where my pockets of time were.
After this the planner walks you through the goal setting process and then breaking those goals into projects and smaller tasks. After all of that you get to the Kanban set up stage and yearly overview section which I find really useful for annual leave and birthday planning. I don’t actually set up a kanban board but I can see how that might be useful for writers and creative project planners etc.
Then you get into the planner itself which is broken down into monthly, weekly and daily planning spreads. (depending on what layout you choose to print as you purchase the PDF from Etsy then decide on which specific layout you like). I printed the layout with the weekly goal focus so that I can review and recap my progress towards my quarterly goals. My progress isn’t perfect but it’s better than when I wasn’t reviewing the journey at all or doing any evaluation.
That brings me to the last bit of the planner. After every week and month there is a dedicated space for reflection on what went well and what still needs improvement. This has helped me really look at what is going well and where I need to focus my mind for the next week/ month
Sarra offers a bootcamp course to take you through the entire process of how to set up your HB90 planner so if you are interested then click the link below to find out more. (please note the link is an affiliate link so should you sign up to the course then I will make a tiny commission).