How to Plan for a New Month
Does the first day of a new month creep up on you and leave you feeling unprepared and scattered?
Today’s post will help you learn how to plan for a new month so you actually make progress toward your goals! This is how I get organized and plan for a new month.
When you hear the phrase “goal setting” do you think of January only? I asked 15 people (my own form of market research I guess, lol) when they reflect on the goals they set in January. 12 of them, TWELVE, said December or the following January. That is insanity to this type A, Enneagram 3, goal loving gal.
Here’s the thing about goals - you have to have checkpoints. You can’t just have the starting line and the finish line and then just hope for the best. You have to break your goals down into workable chunks and assess your progress along the way so you can adjust your course if you need to. You know - the whole be stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods thing.
Anyway, why the heck am I talking about goals if this episode is about getting organized and planning for a new month? Because the start of each month is when I do this goal assessing that I’m talking about!
I have a monthly reflection date with myself on the first of every month I’m going to walk you through what that looks like for me. But first, I need you to know that I’m serious that I do this every single month. Like it is a standing date in my calendar. It takes an hour or less but it has been a game changer as far as actually making my goals happen. But if you want this to work for you then you have to be consistent and disciplined with it. And honestly, it’s FUN because I make it fun. And you can too!
I pour a cup of coffee in one of my favorite mugs, put on a good lofi playlist, pop oils in my diffuser (I always diffuse abundance for this), and set up camp at my desk or in my swinging egg chair in the backyard if it’s not 3,000 degrees, which it is here in Florida right now, so I’m sticking with my desk until like November.
Big note here: This monthly date with myself is a judgement free zone, okay? This is about reflecting, assessing, and making shifts. It’s about growing.Now y’all know, if you follow me on Instagram, that my faith is everything to me, So before I get started with my monthly date, I always say a prayer inviting Jesus to be there with me. I’m all about dreaming with Him.
Okay and here’s what I have with me:
My Hustle Sanely Journal (which is on my iPad)
My Hustle Sanely Content Planner (also on my iPad)
My Hustle Sanely Home Base Planner (again on my iPad)
And here’s what I do with all these things:
1. I start with my Hustle Sanely Journal - I think because it’s my favorite!
I start off by assessing my goals. I pull up my goal list - a place in my journal where I keep my 10 long term goals written down. Now, I write these out every morning in my journal, because there is so much power in keeping your goals in the front of your brain every day but the first of every month, I carefully read through them all and ask myself, “Is this still a priority to me? Is this still something that I want to be putting my energy toward?”
Next, I open up to the monthly page for the month that we are wrapping up - so June, in this case. I take a look at my habit tracker and see how consistent I was with the habits I chose for that month. If I notice that there is a habit that I kind of dropped the ball on, I don’t allow myself to get upset or angry or call myself a failure because remember, we are not judging ourselves - we are assessing. I ask myself, “Why did you not stick to this habit? Is the goal it supports not a priority in this season?”
The next thing I do is open up the monthly page for the new month, so July, in this case. I flip (well scroll I guess) to the second monthly page and answer the following questions:
- What went well last month?
- What can I improve this month?
- 3 action steps I’m taking this month (I base these on my 10 big goals that I was talking about earlier)
- Who to love on extra and how
These questions help me assess and reflect on personal goals, business goals, and hold me accountable to making sure that I’m keeping it a priority to love on the people in my life. Because I mean hello, hustling sanely is all about pursuing our goals without sacrificing our mental health and relationships, remember?
Reflecting is important but you have to take it a step further and make adjustments based on your reflecting. Do your goals need to be changed? Or if your goals are still resonating with you but you didn’t make any progress toward them, how can you change your approach?
“One tip: give yourself permission to change your mind. We are dynamic beings. We evolve as we learn and grow. So do our dreams!”
Then I go back to the first July page (or whatever new month it is) and I decide what habits I want to track in my habit tracker that align with my 3 action steps or big goals for that month. I’m a very visual person so having a habit tracker where I bubble in which habits I do each day is really helpful (and honestly motivating) for me when it comes to working toward my goals. It’s pretty hard to stare at a bunch of blank bubbles and wonder why your goals aren’t happening, you know? Plus not gonna lie, it gives me a thrill each day when I get to bubble in each habit - it’s the little things, guys.
The last thing I do in my journal is write a monthly affirmation. This is a statement followed by scripture that I say to myself every single day for that month. It’s my way of speaking truth and life over myself and honestly, it’s a good way to help me memorize scripture too because I struggle with that! I use my affirmation as kind of an anchor throughout my month.
So that’s what the first part of my monthly prep date looks like using my journal.
2. Then I move onto my content planner so I can track what happened in my business over the last month.
In the content planner, I have a stats page where I go in and write down how many Instagram followers, email subscribers, podcast downloads, Hustle Sanely BFFs on Patreon, YouTube subscribers, Young Living kits I sold along with my rank, TpT sales, and shop sales (including courses and digital planners).
Again, this is a way for me to track progress and growth in my business - it prompts me to look at what worked and what didn’t so I can use this information moving forward as I work toward other business goals. Seeing the progress from month to month makes the mundane feeling tasks that we do to grow our businesses every day worth it. Kinda lights a fire under your booty to keep going. Then it’s super cool at the end of the year to be able to see the growth that happened from January to December. Even if you don’t have an online business and have the need to track the stats I do, try to figure out some stats you can track from month to month to keep you grounded in your goals.
Maybe, if you’re in school, you can track your grades and GPA. Or whatever you do for a living, figure out what stats make sense for you to track. I also pull up a Google Doc that I share with my husband while I’m doing my content planner and track our personal and business finances from month to month.
Y’all have heard me talk about habits and triggers and one of my triggers is when I fill out the stats page in my content planner every month, open the financial tracker Google doc and fill it out as well. I don’t keep this in my planner just because #1 it’s private and personal info and #2 I want my husband to be able to access it as well.
3. The last thing I grab is my Hustle Sanely Home Base Planner.
This is what I use for my actual planning - like monthly, weekly, and daily planning. I start off by filling out the section called “Monthly Plan”
What goes on this page is:
Affirmation
Top 3 goals
Monthly To-Do list (I pull these from my master to-do list which is another section in this planner)
Important dates (like birthdays, launches, holidays, etc.)
Who I want to love on extra and how I’m going to do that
Habit tracker
So a lot of this is copied over from my Hustle Sanely Journal but I’m extra so I fill it out in both every month - plus, when you own a digital planning shop and you have access to all the planning things it’s fine right? That’s what I tell myself, lol.
The next thing I fill out in this is my monthly calendar. It’s exactly what it sounds like. But I will say that I don’t go all out with my monthly planning - I just write very specific dates I need to know on my monthly calendar from the important dates section of the first page and then I also add in little reminders to pay certain bills, upload exclusive podcast episodes - my tasks that are recurring each month if that makes sense.
Here’s a look at the planner I’m talking about:
So that’s an overall look at how I prep for a new month! I feel like it’s a good mixture of checking in with myself emotionally, spiritually, and taking a logistics-based look at the progress I made toward my goals.
Whatever you decide to do to prep for a new month, I encourage you to weave assessing and reflecting in there so you can make sure that what you’re doing day to day is actually propelling you in the direction you want to be headed.
If you enjoyed this post, tune into episode 038 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to listen into this topic!
