Once again, we reach that moment when, in the Norther hemisphere, we enjoy the longest day and the shortest night of the year: it´s the summer solstice. And once again, we got lucky with the weather, like last year: it´s been a gorgeous day here in Ireland.

Now that I think about it, all season changes have something special,, don´t they? Very often they´re moments of change also within us, or at a minimum, a great opportunity to take a step back and assess how we´re doing.

(Photo taken at Malahide beach, exactly one year ago)

In previous years, I wrote about small rituals you can perform on days like this, like, for example, during Saint John´s Eve. This time, however, I´m afraid my proposal sounds considerably less glamorous and more bureaucratic, though I hope you will find it equally inspiring, and above all, useful: doing quarterly planning.

This is something that, in many companies, including where I work (at least in the technology-oriented areas), is a well-established process, and, coincidentally, our team is due to do it this coming week, although we´ve already been preparing for a couple of weeks. The basic steps we follow and the questions we ask ourselves can be used for all kinds of projects, big and small, personal and professional:

The first thing we have to do is clarify priorities:

• What would we like our main focus to be in this coming quarter?
• When the quarter is over, what would we like to have achieved?
• What else would we like to at least make some progress on?

Let´s remember some basic rules when it comes to prioritising anything: if everything is equally important, then nothing is, which makes the word "priority" lose its meaning, rendering the whole system completely useless. What definitely works is estabilshing an order of priorities,, ranking them so that no positions are shared. So, to ensure the first priority is actually the first one on the list, the rest of tasks, projects or goals have to necessarily be placed underneath.

A technique that can really help here is distinguishing between tasks, projects or goals that absolutely need to be in the plan for whatever reason (also called "must-have"), and the ones that it would be nice to get included, but that are not indispensable as such (also called "nice to have"). This distinction can clarify a lot for us, making the rest of the process a lot more straightforward.

By the way, I want to say that I´m generalising a lot here; when I refer to "tasks, projects or goals", it can be literally anything that´s important to us and that we want to give time, energy and attention to. For this summer quarter, for example, one of the top priorities may very well be to rest and go on vacation, which is absolutely necessary in order to maintain a sustainable pace later on.

Once priorities are clear, and knowing the reason why the top priorities are at the top, we move on to define the work:

• How much work is involved in each of these priorities?
• What is the work? What needs to be done (roughly)?
• What resources do we need to do that work? Do we already have them, or are we dependent on others to get them?

The idea here is to understand the scope of each task, project or goal, getting to a level of detail that allows us to roughly estimate the effort. We should also have a good understanding of whether we depend on others, or others depend on us, to successfully complete it.

Now that we have a relatively clear idea of the work, we can move to calculate capacity:

• How much work can we tackle this trimester? (taking into account other factors as well)
• Does everything we were hoping to fit in, fit in?
• How can we adjust the plan so that we maximise the results?

And here is where the rubber meets the road: evaluating capacity against workload. We all have a limited amount of hours in a day, and in the majority of cases, other tasks and obligations to attend to, so this step is fundamental: how realistic is to try and cover everything we´re including in the plan?

Finding the answer to this question can be a little tricky sometimes, and it may require negotiation with others or with ourselves if, after doing all the sums, it doesn´t all "fit in". But that´s exactly why doing this exercise is so fundamental; to be able to, on the one hand, adjust and optimize the plan as required, and on the other hand, manage expectations (those from others, and also our own). All this is what is going to allow us to increase our chances of success.

What do you think of this process? Do you see yourself doing this for your personal life, or maybe a creative or professional project? I have a few things I want to move forward this summer, so that I can start strong in September.

What about you? What´s your plan?