7 Steps to Planning a Productive Year in Evernote

Small business owners, this article is for you to plan your year, quarter, and even the next month.

There’s a growing community of self-employed business owners inside the Academy — like me! Inside the Academy, I invest a lot of time and resources into training members on how to use Evernote to support running a business right alongside a personal life.

And, given it's the end of the year, planning my business for 2022 is on my mind. Naturally, I use Evernote to support this process. Still, over the 10+ years I've run my business, I’ve also developed several planning habits that keep me focused on growth and moving forward.

Here's how I'm planning for next year.

1. Reflect.

We need to look back before looking forward. I started my reflection in the fall at an in-person event in Tampa. The reflection exercises helped me clarify my goals and what I want my business to look like a year from now. Since taking time out to reflect, the inspiration keeps popping up. Capturing my reflections in Evernote unlocked a deeper layer of introspection. Read about my reflection process here.

Before taking any other action, I put my reflection notes aside to marinate. As I did, new ideas kept coming to me.

2. Brainstorm.

The funny thing about the brainstorming process is that once you plant those seeds during reflection, you open the floodgates for new ideas and see inspiration everywhere. Naturally, new ideas happen when out for a walk or at the store — rarely when I’m sitting at my desk. I’ve committed to logging every idea in Evernote. This way, my brainstorm grows organically over time, and I got crystal clear on what I needed to do to reach my goals for next year.

Two ways Evernote supports me in brainstorming:

1. I rely on Evernote’s Scratch Pad feature from my mobile phone to quickly jot down ideas that come to me when I’m out and about.

2. I have a note in my account titled “Mindsweep” (I shortcut it for easy access from any device). This note is an essential “catch-all note” where I capture my brainstorming ideas to get them out of my head and into a place where I can review and organize them later. Eventually, I’ll use my mindsweep to create project lists that reflect my goals.

3. Refine the list.

Since I’ve been adding all those ideas that popped up to my mindsweep note since my reflection, it needs some organizing now. After some time away, I jump back into my brainstorm in Evernote and get clear on my big project buckets for the upcoming year.

GTD® comes into play when picking my list of goals. GTD meaning David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done. I sort everything I want to accomplish into existing GTD buckets I have set up inside of Evernote — projects, someday/maybe's, next actions, and waiting for's.

New to GTD? Through my GTD practice and lessons learned from coaching thousands to success using Evernote for GTD, I’ve found that there are 5 Steps to Stress-Free Productivity.

Lastly, I order my list of projects in terms of priority.

4. Big Picture Calendaring.

I bring in the calendaring process with my prioritized list. To chunk it down, I think of it in terms of quarters — asking myself, what can I reasonably accomplish in three months?

I start with the big picture and then narrow my focus to create some order. First up is my wall calendar. I’m highly visual, so I need to see everything laid out in front of me for the year.

My favorite tool for this is the NeuYear dry erase wall calendar. I like the large format, minimalist presentation, and flexibility that the dry-erase offers.

I use a combination of sticky notes to represent my life buckets: health goals, travel, work projects, etc. Keep these to five or less otherwise, it can get overwhelming. I move the sticky notes around the wall calendar until I feel like it represents my priorities and is realistic, and finally, capture them in different dry erase colors.

I keep the wall calendar where I can easily see it every day. I look at it often, and as big markers or plans change, I update it on the wall. I also log key dates throughout the year — documenting what I actually achieved against my plan to assist me in reflection the next year.

And, at the end of the year, before tossing the outdated calendar, I use the Evernote camera to capture it to Evernote, which retains a history of my big picture calendaring over the years. This creates a reference point for me to use in planning future years.

5. Evernote Calendar Templates.

When it’s time to get granular, I look at the next quarter and use the Evernote Calendar templates to start laying out my goals in digital form. Here, I’ll add details and start creating time blocks on my Google calendar to account for the days and weeks a project may take. It’s important to do this for only a quarter at a time. I find that life changes quickly, and if you get granular for an entire year, it potentially sets you up for a tremendous amount of rework.

I map all the projects I want to tackle in Evernote and create the next actions from those I decide are an active priority. I also rely on my Evernote-based GTD practice to surface and manage my top priorities daily that move me toward the project goal listed on my Evernote calendar.

6. Daily Action Steps For Progress.

Each morning, I review how much open time I have on my Google calendar between meetings and other commitments. I time-block this out to be the time I work on my daily priorities. I often work in Pomodoros, in community, online during these blocks of time. And, I plan what I'm going to work on at the top of each Pomodoro cycle. Since I use Evernote as my project and task manager, I typically reference Evernote while working during the Pomodoro.

7. What You Track Improves.

We invest all that time brainstorming, dreaming, and planning — and so many business owners forget to track.

Monthly, I track Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) in a Google Sheet. I paste the link to that Google sheet right into my custom Evernote template I created to track my monthly bookkeeping and budgeting process.

Evernote has an official integration with Google and with one click I have access to my KPI tracker – right from within Evernote.

My KPI tracking sheet is one data point that helps me make decisions on adjusting the plan for the next quarter.

Once your plan is in place, accountability to work the plan is important for me to keep the momentum going. Business owners (and busy professionals) love how the training sessions inside The Academy promote accountability and help them to master Evernote in support of reaching their goals all year long.