A Tool For Big Picture Planning 👩🏻‍🏫

Grab my 12-month calendar designed for color-coded planning

There’s a method I teach in my group courses that I call “ABTs”, which stands for Available Blocks of Time. While I typically teach this in the context of creating your daily schedule, it can also be really helpful for annual planning.

The first thing to know is that most of us learn to manage our time in this order:

🔴 HAVE To Dos
🟡 NEED To Dos
🟢 WANT To Dos

This has us putting our "wants” at the bottom of the list. The things that make us happy! Recharge our energy! And make life worth LIVING. This order comes naturally to many of us thanks mostly to capitalism — which will always strive to fill up any extra room in our lives if we let it. Continuously doing this can leave us burnt out, uninspired, and resentful.

Instead, we want to switch to an order that looks like this:

🔴 HAVE To Dos
🟢 WANT To Dos
🟡 NEED To Dos

This revised order helps us take advantage of Parkinson’s Law, which states that “work will expand so as to fill the time available for it’s completion”.

If the “time available for it’s completion” includes all our potential free time, it will likely “expand to fill it”. Leaving us with — you guessed it — no free time for the things we WANT to do.

To help you try this method , I’ve put simple steps below along with a 12-month calendar that is perfect for working through this:

🔴 Step One: HAVE To Dos

1. Identify the things you have to make time for in the next 12 months.

2. These are things you are committed/obligated to do, and that would cause issues if you ignored or forgot about them.

3. Examples: important meetings, doctors appts, planned medical procedures, weddings or other events, work/required travel.

4. Add them to your calendar.

🟢 Step Two: WANT To Dos

1. Identify the things you want to make time for in the next 12 months.

2. These are the things that help you feel fulfilled and joyful, and are important to you, but might not impact anyone else if you didn’t do them.

3. Examples: vacations, recurring date nights, making time to work on hobby projects, periods for rest, going on a retreat, extended time with loved ones.

4. Add them to your calendar.

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The time slots remaining on your calendar at this point are your “Available Blocks of Time”, and that is where we want to put our “NEED To Dos”, so that they are time boxed by our non-negotiable obligations (HAVE To Dos) and the things that recharge and inspire us (WANT To Dos).

🟡 Step Three: NEED To Dos

1. Identify the things you need to make time for.

2. These are things that move forward various aspects of your life such as creating income, advancing your skills, or strengthening your network.

3. Examples: big work projects, product launches, online courses, webinars, remodeling/renovations, attending networking events or retreats, publishing research.

4. Add them to your calendar.
   

💡 Tip: When doing this annually, try to keep this “high level” or “big picture”. Don’t get into the nitty-gritty of your daily schedule, instead focus on all-day events, recurring events, or events that will span multiple days or weeks.

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Alternative Ways to Use It

We’re all different, and some of us might think about time, calendars, or schedules in a way that isn’t compatible with a method like ABTs. That’s okay!

There other ways to use a calendar like this, too. Such as:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⏰ Getting a snapshot of how your time is being allocated throughout the year (periods of work + rest, etc.).
📋 Planning launches or long-term strategy.
✅ Tracking new habits that you’re developing.
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Managing complex family schedules, custody, or child care.
👩🏻‍🌾 Seasonal things like crop rotations or gardening plans.

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Grab the File:

If you’ve got some plans to make for the next 365 days, grab the pdf file for my 12-month calendar below. You can choose between either a Sunday or Monday start version: