10 Ways to use a Year at a Glance Planner
Have you ever noticed that just about every planner and diary you find on the market starts with an annual calendar / year at a glance overview? Most of the time we just flick past the page, occasionally looking up the odd date; but have you ever thought about all the other ways you could use these little pages?
The key to running a successful business is organisation - knowing what you have to do, planning ahead and tracking results. Vital tasks if you want to avoid a bad case of headless chicken.
You may be surprised at all the ways an Annual Planner can help you get started with this.
Here are 10 of my favourite ideas for how you can use your Year at a Glance calendar. Why not try some of them out for yourself ? Or, even better, add some ideas of your own and let me know what you used them for.
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If you want to get started, try my free Simple Year at a Glance Planner, or why not visit my Etsy Shop to take your organisation a step further and start your planning in style * shameless plug :-) *
#1 Goal Setting
Once you've decided on your goals for the next 12 months, take your Year at a Glance Planner and a highlighter pen and mark off your key target dates for the year.
You can then can see your overall plan for the year and make sure that you've spaced out your target dates out evenly.
There's no point setting goals that all have an achievement date of the end of the year. You'll do nothing for the first 6 months and then panic at everything you have left to do in December.
Set your goals to be achieved throughout the year, highlight them on your calendar and then plan out the actions you need to take to achieve them. Even better - tick them off as they are completed so you have a visual reminder of everything you have accomplished for when you need a little more inspiration.
Get your free Goal Setting worksheet over on my Free Printables page.
#2 Financial planning
This can be a game changer to stress levels. We all have so many dates to remember for contract renewals these days and if you're running your own business then you can multiply that number by 10!
Take a year on a page calendar and highlight all the dates when something renews. Domain registration, hosting contract, tailwind, broadband, 12 month discount on your mobile phone, or whatever else you've signed up for.
On the back of the calendar, write a brief description of what each one is.
Simple but so effective.
Now when you come to your monthly planning at the start of each month you have an instant snapshot of what you need to sort out and renegotiate. Try this one for home as well as work to sort out all those hundreds of different contracts, credit card deals, utilities special offers etc.
#3 Product Launch Calendar
Whether you sell on-line courses, handcrafted items or digital prints you need to have a launch calendar for the year.
It is far more productive to launch a product collection a few times per year, or have a few major product releases than it is to continually drip-feed items into your shop / website with no thought or plan behind them.
Take the time at the start of the year to plan out your key launches for the next 12 months and highlight the date on your calendar. You can then start working more detailed plans before and after your launch date to ensure that you have time to create your product and market it - pre and post launch.
Which leads me onto No. 4 ...
#4 Social Media Planning
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter not to mention Pinterest plus remembering all those group boards, Tribes and Facebook Groups - the list is endless. It takes a mastermind to keep track of what you're posting when and to where.
A Year at a Glance page is never going to completely solve this for you as you will need more detailed planning but it can be a good place to start.
Why not try using colours to highlight the days when you will post to each medium so you get a quick overview of how balanced your posting will be. You can then move on to your monthly planner to add more detail - or why not use a year over 4 pages layout to jot down ideas for what to post when.
Related Post: 10 Awesome Inserts you need in your Planner
#5 Birthdays and special dates
Not a pure business task, but definitely one to get right if you want any sort of work life balance.
Never forget your mums' / best friends' / wifes' / partners' birthday ever again by marking them on your Year at a Glance calendar and seeing them months and weeks ahead.
Gives you plenty of time to track down that perfect present, even if your business is going crazy, giving you brownie points for the rest of the year.
#6 Habit tracking
New year, new you, new routine. It is quite common to find habit trackers built in to weekly and monthly planner inserts but why not plan a whole year at a time.
An annual calendar is a perfect place to tick off each day that you stick to a routine. Or why not try planning your year out in advance - particularly if you have a routine you want to track that isn't everyday.
You can highlight the days when you plan to complete a task and then cross it off when completed.
#7 Vacation Planning
Another one for the work life balance folder. Having time away from your business is vital to recharge your batteries, spend time with your loved ones or just to spend a little me-time on self love.
Plan your time off in advance so you can avoid last minute clashes, schedule work ahead of time and have no excuse to make it out the door.
Highlight the dates of all your vacations and look forward to counting off the days until the next one.
#8 Bill payments
A great one to help you plan your business finances. Why not keep an annual planner solely to mark off when bills are due and when they're paid. This is fabulous for those regular bills that fall on a set day each month.
You can mark the whole year in advance but also add to it as you go to make sure that any new commitments are not forgotten.
#9 School term dates
This is perfect if you've got children at school or college, or are at college yourself.
Get all the holidays and inset days marked out in 1 place so you know when you'll have a house full (& no time to work!).
I have a 2nd job looking after the finances of a local preschool and use this one every week to know whether they're in session or not. Saves the drive over, only to find they're closed for the week (not that I've ever done that...)
#10 Sales Tracking
Last, but definitely not least. Once everything's going to plan and you're having a fabulous year, why not make a visual planner to track your sales.
Add a tick, a highlight, a dot or a fancy sticker every time you make a sale and start seeing your results on the page.
As you go through the year your marks will get closer together and before you know it you'll have too many sales each day to make this work.
There you have it - no need to just keep a blank Year at a Glance Calendar in the front of your Planner to look up dates.
Get yourself a few printable Annual Planners in whatever style you like and print off a handful today to try out these ideas for 2022.
Organise your life and your business with a planner then start tracking those results.
Grab your Free Year at a Glance Planner or visit the shop to see the full range.
Let me know if there's something else you use your planner for in the comments - I'm always up for a new idea.
Sarah x
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