How to Plan for the Year When You’re a Mom

Why am I talking about making a plan for the year at the end of March?! This isn’t the time of year to set goals, is it?

Maybe it is. Have you ever become frustrated by the good intentions of January 1 falling by the wayside later in the year? I know I have.

Let’s be real. You’re not the same person in October, let alone February, so often whatever you write down as a goal at the start of a new year doesn’t make sense months or even weeks later.

Add kids into the mix, and you know things are going to be different in the blink of an eye!

You know that planning out a yearly calendar and expecting to make much progress over the course of the year with kids constantly growing and changing is just begging for trouble. You and your kids are going to change so much over the upcoming year that the things that you thought you wanted at the start of the year may no longer make sense come June.

Don’t get me wrong. Strategic planning is key when you’re a mom, but short-term goals and quarterly reviews are key to make your big goals happen.

That’s why creating a plan for the year or even annual goals — at least when you’re a mom — isn’t the way to go. In fact, the first step is to shorten your planning calendar.

It’s a very good idea for moms to set 90-day goals. 

Why Plan for the Year with 90-Day Goals

It’s being honest with yourself. If you’re to manage your home, family, and personal expectations, you need to be realistic. So much changes in the life of your family, that planning for an entire year just isn’t practical. For your own sense of accomplishment and mental health, don’t ask too much of yourself. Dream big, but know that things change. Build good habits and make progress toward personal goals, knowing you can reassess or shift gears if that turns out not to be one of your most important things for this season of life.

It’s doable. Planning 90 days at a time isn’t a new strategy I dreamt up. It’s been explored by many before me, including the authors of The 12-Week Year and The Gap and the Gain, respectively. Ninety days tends to be an industry standard for many fields, including personal growth. As one author posits, “90 days seems to be the range where ambition and planning actually fall reasonably close together.”

It allows for growth. You grow and change often as do your kids, so you may outgrow some Jan 1st goals sooner than you think or take longer with others than you expect. Reassessing every three months and adjusting your target regularly can be more satisfying and productive. We need strategic goals that grow with us!

It gives you a fresh starting point four times a year. Who doesn’t like a fresh start?! With 90-day planning, you can get that clean slate every three months!

How to Start Your Plan for the Year

Get a big picture view. 

Zoom out enough on your life so you can see the lay of the land, so to speak. I do this in my planner by brainstorming What I Want on one page in words and on the other page with pictures and graphics. Whether you create vision boards or lists in a planner or not, I find it to be very helpful to keep the big picture in mind.

You might also include a timeline of upcoming benchmarks such as anniversaries, birthdays, and graduations. I spent sometime mapping out our family’s major events over the next few years.

I’m not going to be planning the next six years of our life, but having a view of the long run, helps me plan more day-to day and weekly routines to help us be ready for those bigger milestones.

Having a far-away timeline is helpful, but think about how you might fill it out a bit with experiences or longterm strategies you want to experience or develop.

Identify what you want to do.

While I’m making the case to plan for the year in 90-day chunks, it’s not without a view at the whole year as well. If you didn’t look at the whole calendar, you wouldn’t know how to spend your time effectively on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis.

This way you can move in the right direction and have the trajectory to hit specific goals long term.

For instance, Bryan and I want to increase our physical health so that we can travel with ease, walk far distances without tiring, and pick up our someday-maybe grandkids. Making these top of mind now will help us make the right decisions and plan appropriately along the way.

So, at the start of the year, when I did my quarterly planning and goal setting, I included the following new goals:

• develop a health protocol for longevity, including nutrition, movement, weight training, sleep, and stress management (basically take care of myself)
• find a good doctor to help me in that process.
• revise my Ideal Week to include time for family, work, rest days
• enjoy a weekly rest day, starting with Sunday night dinner and carrying into Monday afternoon

For you, the new habits you want to build might be different. Maybe you want to enjoy a weekly date night, to take a vacation day off each month or have one-on-one time with each kid. Maybe your healthy habits fell off the radar over the past year and you want to start taking better care of yourself.

Do a massive brain dump and think about what next step you can take toward making your vision board a reality.

Plan a few good things.

Limit yourself. No matter how you plan, consider choosing just one or two areas to focus on. The theory is that when you get one area under control or vibing in the direction you want it to be, other areas will start cooperating.

You don’t have to do all the things at one time. (Spoiler: you can’t even if you tried.)

That said, take baby steps toward a few good things, making an actionable plan to make them happen. For me, that looked like:

• researching the different things I wanted to improve
• talking with a nutrition coach
• getting a physical and doing the necessary bloodwork
• joining the gym and creating a daily routine that supports that
• creating my time budget to tweak and adjust
• making Sunday dinner a regular event in our family’s google calendar
• intentionally planning our meals for Sunday dinner instead of letting it be impromptu as Sundays are apt to be

Each day I use the post-it note to-do list in my planner to choose an action step to get me closer to what I want. Some times they are big tasks, sometimes they are small ones. The point is to keep moving forward and making progress on my action plan.

Reassess and pivot.

At the end of the quarter, revisit your goals. Do your longterm desires still suit you? Do your to-do list items reflect that or do you need to be more intentional in giving feet to your year goals?

As the 90 days rolls to an end next week, I’m revisiting my own action items and revising them.

For instance, I got a membership at Planet Fitness but am reconsidering whether I will keep it. I know that Q2 will be busy with travel, a possible shoulder surgery, and lots of driving the girls to their summer volunteer work. I don’t want to pay for something I won’t use, so I may adjust what I do for movement and weight training accordingly.

If I had said on January 1, my goal is to stick with Planet Fitness for a year, I might be disappointing myself or feeling like a failure. 90-day planning gives me permission to change and adjust as I plan for the year as a whole in ways that suit my real life better. Wherever I’m at.

Annual planning is great, but having contingency plans or just the ability to switch gears is important. Half the battle is giving yourself permission to change your mind.

A successful year isn’t about ticking the boxes. It’s about living your life in tune with your principles and blessing your family where they are today.

Plan for the year, but in 90-day chunks, is a great way to move yourself in the right direction.