Doing a quarterly audit

It’s March 30^th. That means that we have one more day in the month. We also have just one more day in the quarter.

How in the hell are we that far into the year already?

Okay, I’m done freaking out now. I think.

Actually, I’m doing pretty good with my goals for 2018. And I’m ready to perform my first quarter audit of the year.

If you’ve read a single other blog post of mine, you know what I’m going to say next.

I rely heavily on my Lisa Jacob’s YBY planner to do my quarterly review.

So, as I take you through my practice, please keep in mind that not all of it is mine. A lot of it is right out of the YBY planner.

Step one: I go over my list of goals for the year, and see what I can cross off. Some things I can’t even look at, like my goal of going to Kennywood three times and publishing my short story collection. It’s just not the season for those things yet.

Some things I’m still making progress on, like my goal to publish an e-book of old PBW posts. It’s a long project, and it’s going to take time. But I’m making progress.

Some things I’m totally done with, and I get to check them off my list! One major one I get to check off my list is finishing the second draft of Sandwashed. Super happy to have that done. The second draft is always the longest edit, and I have two-second drafts to do this year. Now I’m working on the second draft of Station Central, which is less than half the length of Sandwashed. That means that easily the longest project of the year is totally done.

Step two: Looking at my remaining goals, see what steps I still need to take. I use the annual objective page of the YBY planner. Here, I take a look at the six big annual goals I made at the start of the year and seeing what still needs to be done.

Step three: Looking at the next three months, assess what I need to do/can realistically do to get closer to my yearly objectives. Sometimes it’s really hard to be realistic because I want to do all of the things all of the time. So, I try to break down everything in the context of what can/needs to be done in each of the three months.

Step four: Complete the next twelve-month annual strategy from Lisa Jacob’s book. This is probably the longest part of the whole process.

As suggested by Lisa, I factor in family and self-care first. I know we’re going to go on vacation in June. That will be a week I’m not progressive. We’ll be going camping a lot this summer, and those days are lost work days too.

I work through the whole next twelve months, and figure out when my books should be done. That allows me to schedule tentative release dates. (Always written in pencil and never announced until the book is actually done.) Based on this, I plan promotion backward. Then add in any promotional stuff I’ll need to be doing into my three-month plans.

So what do you think? Will you be doing a quarterly update?

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