3 Things To Audit Every Quarter (& My New Daily Schedule)
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ What quarterly check-in meetings are
⋒ 3 things to audit and edit every quarter to live a peacefully productive life
⋒ Jess's new daily schedule for this season of life
I love the start of a new quarter and sitting down to do my quarterly check-in meeting. Before I tell you what 3 things I audit every quarter, let’s back up and chat about my quarterly check-in meeting.
If you are a Peacefully Productive Schedule course student or you have the Hustle Sanely Handbook, you’re familiar with what I’m talking about. In those 2 resources, I teach the Hustle Sanely Habits that help me live a peacefully productive life all year long.
Here are the habits:
- Yearly Vision Meeting
- Quarterly Check-In Meetings
- Monthly Check-In Meetings
- Weekly Prep Meetings
- Daily Habits: Morning routine, HS5, and Evening routine
These each have a different purpose and all work together to help you work toward your goals while prioritizing your mental health and relationships.
Today, we’re zeroing in on the Quarterly Check-In Meeting.
When To Do It: Before the start of a new quarter (January, April, July, & October)
Purpose of It: ASSESS GOALS – to reflect on and assess your goals/the methods you’re using to approach them and to intentionally prep for the next quarter.
At the start of each quarter, check-in and make sure your goals and the methods you’re using to work toward them still align with your vision. As our seasons change (expectedly and unexpectedly) sometimes we have to shift our goals, too.
QUESTIONS TO ASK DURING A QUARTERLY CHECK-IN MEETING:
Reflect:
• What is the best thing that happened last quarter?
• What didn’t work well last quarter?
• Do my current habits support my vision?
• What new habits and routines do I need to implement to better support my vision?
Prep:
• What is my focus goal for each month this quarter?
• How can I offer my resources (time, money, skills, etc.) to help others this quarter?
• What exciting things are coming up this quarter?
When I did my quarter 4 check-in meeting, I ended up making some pretty significant changes since my upcoming season is so drastically different…I am having a baby this quarter!
So what are the 3 things that I audit and edit every quarter?
01. Yearly vision and goals
To do this, I whip out my vision board, which I create before the start of every new year, and look over it. The way that I create my vision boards (which I have a podcast episode planned for later this year walking you through my process) allows me to see my goals for the year for each area of my life.
I read through them one by one and ask myself a series of questions about each:
~ Does this goal still make sense for my current season of life?
I ended up getting rid of some of my 2022 goals because I didn’t know I would be pregnant when I created them at the end of 2021 and frankly, some just didn’t jive with this new season.
~ Does this goal still align with my values?
~ Do I still care about this goal?
When I run through these questions, I’m not trying to overanalyze or overthink anything. I’m just honestly answering each question about each goal. It helps me to weed out goals that don’t need to be taking up my brain space so I can instead give my best time and energy to goals I actually care about and that align with my vision.
I used to feel guilty about letting goals go – like I was being flaky or wishy-washy. But over the years, I’ve learned how to #1 set more intentional goals so that I don’t have to let as many go in the first place and #2 how to be more self-aware and truly understand why I’m letting certain goals go without attaching my worth as a person to said goal.
Now keep in mind, sometimes, you won’t need to make many edits. Sometimes, things are gonna be flowing and feeling good and that is amazing! You don’t ALWAYS have to make massive changes. And other times, when your season is really shifting, ahem…like being in your third trimester of pregnancy and preparing to enter into motherhood, you may feel the need to really revamp parts of your life to best support where you’re at right now.
02. Routines
The next thing that I audit is my routines. Habits fall under this category because most of our routines are made up of habits…habits are the building blocks of routines, right?
So to audit my routines, lately, I’ve been focusing on what I call life’s “foundational habits”.
These are habits that make up the foundation of our lives – how we feel on a daily basis. When we focus our energy on these things, we are creating the most peacefully productive life we can. What I consider to be foundational habits are:
~ The words we say about ourselves and our situations
~ How we treat our bodies (what we eat/what supplements we take, our water intake, our sleep quality, our movement)
~ What we consume (read, watch, listen to)
~ How we spend our time (both scheduled and margin time)
These things may feel small or insignificant at the moment but when you add them all up each day they are incredibly impactful.
When I’m speaking positively about myself and my situations, when I’m eating foods that make me feel healthy, when I’m drinking enough water, when I’m getting enough sleep, when I’m moving my body every day, when I’m consuming content that is uplifting and life-giving, when I’m spending my time doing things that align with my life vision (instead of scrolling social media or watching hours of reality TV) life feels more peaceful no matter what is going on.
03. Schedule
The last thing I want to talk about auditing and editing every quarter is your schedule. Think about the flow of your days. Do all of your days look the same right now or is there a variance? What helps me is thinking about my day in chunks: morning, afternoon, and evening.
I envision my ideal day, what habits would I be doing in the morning? What wouldn’t I be doing in the morning? What about the afternoon? What about the evening?
I’ve shared the ideal day exercise on the show before and I actually included it in the 2023 Peacefully Productive Planners in the exact way that I do it – breaking down your focus or intention for each part of the day and jotting down habits that you do want to be doing and don’t want to be doing.
After I do that, I compare my ideal day to how my days currently flow and feel.
Something that I noticed right now is that I was craving simplicity. As I mentioned earlier, my energy levels are lower than I’m used to right now, so I want everything to be the least mentally taxing as they can be.
For the past few quarters, I’ve worked my daily schedule around the workout classes I wanted to do since I was going to a group fitness gym – I’d pick the trainers I liked and kind of structure my days around when they had classes available. Each day looked a little bit different, time-wise.
Now, that’s not really a priority to me. In this season, I’d rather all of my days have the same schedule so I don’t have to think about what’s next but I can just show up and use my brain power to do the tasks that need to be done every day.
Here is my daily schedule for Q4:
6:00-7:30 Morning Routine
I’m still using the MAPPING method that I share in episode 143 of my podcast, so head back and listen to that if you want to know what I do in the mornings.
8:00-9:00 Workout
I’ve been focusing on gentler at-home workouts like walking and weight lifting and stretching as opposed to the HIIT classes that I normally do.
11:00-4:00 or 5:00 Work
I say 4 or 5 because it just depends on what calls and meetings I have.
I am really savoring my mornings before the baby comes so I am in no rush to start my work days right now. I like to have slow mornings and do my HS5 and pregnancy wellness routine before getting to my work for the day.
5:30-10:00 Evening Routine
This is my after-work time, where I’m doing stuff around the house to prep for baby, hanging out with Adam, taking a bath and reading, and getting dinner with friends…every evening honestly looks different right now and I’m cool with that since the first part of all of my days looks the same right now.
This is what my days will look like for the foreseeable future until the baby comes!
