We're an affiliate
We hope you love we recommend! Just so you know, we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page at no extra cost to you. Thank you if you use our links, we really appreciate it!
2020 has been quite an interesting year and I felt that it has gone both fast and slow at the same time. The first quarter of the year is already almost over and I’m kind of just rolling with it because like I said, it has gone quite fast. As you may know, I tend to do monthly preps or planning from the posts I’ve made about it in January, February, and March. And each month I set up my goals for the upcoming month and how I’m planning to achieve them. This year I started it by dividing my yearly goals into quarters and then breaking those goals into monthly goals. I have a lot of things planned for this upcoming second quarter and just thinking about it is stressing me out but at the same time, I’m excited. In May I will graduate from high school and I’m super excited to start a new chapter in my life with university and terrified at the same time. So I’m just gonna stop rambling and head into my first quarter review and second quarter planning.
Also, I want to point out, I made the spreads for the review and planning but have not filled them out yet because the first quarter has not ended yet and a lot can happen in a week.
Bullet Journal
My bullet journal is a big part of my day to day life so every time I need to make a list or plan something out regarding my personal life I will reach for it. If you don’t know what a bullet journal is I suggest you check out my blog post on how I started bullet journaling and my recommendations.
I made a one-page spread in my bullet journal to review and plan. You may be thinking one page is not enough but in my case, I write small so I think it will be just enough for me.
First Quarter Review
The top section of my page is dedicated to reviewing the whole quarter by month. I made three boxes, one for each month, to put a sentence or two of what didn’t work in terms of things I tried like setting up my alarm earlier or a specific type of weekly spread, etc. Those were just examples, I don’t know what I’m gonna write in there yet. I have my monthly reviews to check that out.
Next is my top 3 for each month. I will be writing down the top three most amazing things or accomplishments I had throughout each month.
And that’s it for my quarter review. This is the first time I review my quarter since it is the first year I’ve set up quarterly goals.
Second Quarter Planning and Goal Setting
The remaining half of the page is dedicated to goal setting for the second quarter. For the quarterly goal setting, I go smaller picture than yearly goals and bigger picture than monthly goals.
Quarter Goals
For my overall quarter goals, I decided to leave a really simple space to jot them down and adjust the ones I had set up in my 2020 bullet journal goals spread according to how I did in the first quarter.
Monthly Breakdown
Now we have a space to divide the main goals of the quarter in the months. For instance, one of my goals for this year is to journal and be grateful every day. I take that goal and since it is a habit one, I put it in every quarter and month. It is just so that I maintain consistency and never lose sight of it.
The Happy Planner/ Creative Projects Planner
In my 2020 Planner and Journal Line Up, I mentioned that I use the happy planner system to work and manage my creative projects, mostly focused on BY. Blogging is something that I enjoy doing since it allows to have a creative outlet to use however I want and express myself creatively. I don’t own a Happy Planner perse that comes with the monthly, weekly, etc. I bought the big punch and a big pack of the expander discs of the Happy Planner system to create my spreads and digital planning pages.
For BY I will mainly do a brainstorm reviewing the first quarter and planning for the second one. I haven’t made up my mind on a planning structure yet. I will also create a bunch of planning pages to try out this upcoming quarter to see if I manage to develop the ideal system.
Lastly for BY I will do my content planning for the quarter and jot it down in my Happy Planner. I use the Notion app to manage my projects more thoroughly because for instance, I do a sort of outline for each blog post and I don’t want to have all my ideas on a piece of paper that can get lost.
I use Notion to track and manage all my ideas as well as all the administrative stuff regarding BY like the designs I use in terms of logos, banners, etc.
And that’s my quarter one review spread with my quarter two prep and planning. I hope you enjoyed and found this blog post helpful. If you liked it, make sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter and check out my social media for more fun content. Let me know in the comments section if you have any sort of planning system at the moment and if you do, do you plan quarterly?
Be Yourself, Be Happy, Be Human.
Lots of Love, Patrick.