Reclaiming Your Business Rhythms
You’ve made your vision board, set your goals, declared your intentions, wrote your commitments down and maybe told your business besties your plans. Cheers! That’s step 1.
But then the path diverges.
Path 1: Dominant Culture
You’ve set these great intentions. But then January happens... and you get busy in the day to day.
... or thinking you have to sign up for a course or tweak your website “just one more time” before you move forward
... or in analysis paralysis about social media
... or abandoning that “perfect morning routine”
... or enamored with a new idea
... or burdened with overwhelming meetings
... or searching for child care
... and have no time left on your calendar
And you feel frustrated, guilty, exhausted, and alone in the pursuit.
This is what dominant culture wants.
It wants you to feel burned out, disembodied, and alone because guess what? There’s big money to be made with overwhelm and productivity culture.
Teaching you a new hack, a new approach, or simply gaslighting you and telling you that not making progress is your fault.
Spoiler Alert: It is not. It is the way dominant productivity culture is wired.
But staying true to our commitments doesn’t have to fall down this path.
We can choose another path, a radical path, that centers rest, focus, cyclicality, and inner knowings by leveraging natural rhythms, intentionality, and community.
Path 2: Radically Different
We dedicate time for tending to our commitments.
We block out our calendars for planning rituals in advance that will allow us to be present with our bodies and emotions.
We follow rhythms that sync up to the horizon and intention required to take our ideas from vision, to strategy, to grounding, and then to execution.
We share our commitments with community to ask for and receive support and witnessing.
We take on fewer, better commitments and honor that some tasks take longer than expected.
We continually iterate to grow, from a space of learning versus a space of failure.
We reclaim our rhythms and radically tend to our commitments.
Reclaiming our Rhythms
In path 2, we move from visioning to execution with a series of planning processes.
You just completed your annual visionary planning to create the aspirations for our lives and businesses for the years to come. We review our gifts, our values, our missions, and our aspirations to create an outline for the long-term and the next year.
Seasonally, we focus on strategic planning to create our priorities, themes and growth edges for the season. We celebrate the journey of the prior season. You’ll create your intentions/priorities for the season, review your capacity and commitments, and refine your monthly milestones. This is a time to get radically focused on 1-2 major focus areas/priorities for the season, based on the season you are in. We anchor this into either the seasons of the year, seasons of conception, or elements, these cycles have demarcated boundaries at about 3 months each.
Monthly, we focus on grounded planning to create tangible steps for the month or two ahead. We reflect on our growth over the prior month. You’ll define your specific goals/milestones for the month and ensure your calendar and your capacity matches those goals. You’ll plan out your content, sales, and messaging. We anchor this into the lunar cycle or astrological cycle, in concert with the season.
Weekly, we focus on flow planning to move forward with ease on our most important tasks and ensure our days are set up for success. You’ll define your most important task for the week, review your calendar for time blocks/red flags, block out buffer time for unplanned issues, and ensure your commitments show up on your calendar.
Daily, we focus on executional planning. Did we accomplish our biggest priority? How much are we taking on in a day?
How to Move Forward on Path 2
Block your February grounded planning session for the end of January.
Block time for your Seasonal planning towards the end of March.
Remove all but 1-2 major commitments from your business priorities in Q1.
Share your commitments with your trusted advisors.