How to Design a Life You Both Love Using Annual Planning
A practical 3-step guide to annual planning with a partner
My partner and I got into planning to get on the same page when we felt ourselves growing in different directions.
You can read all about why we started planning and why it’s worth doing here.
We stick with planning (and honestly look forward to it) because it gives us clarity and alignment on our priorities each year.
Planning enables us to build an intentional life that we both feel excited about.
Let’s get into exactly how to do it.
Planning Your Year in Three Steps
You’ll notice I didn’t call them “easy” steps — because they’re not.
Below, I outline the three step process that we’ve settled on after our 10+ years of trial and error. Before you read it though, I want to emphasize that the best process is the one that you’ll actually use.
Thinking through and discussing what you want out of your life in any way that feels good for you, will be a great first step.
Disclaimer — Talking about the future and dreams and possibility may sound like a romantic evening over wine.
But, in practice, it usually sucks.
There are natural constraints in time, energy, money, ability, and competing ideas and priorities that get factored in to planning.
The process can be exhausting, even though it’s rewarding.
Go in with eyes wide open. Take breaks often. Don’t do it all in one day.
Step #1 — The Long Term Vision
This sounds huge and scary, but it doesn’t have to be.
Your long-term vision could be a detailed personal plan. It could also be a simple bucket list, a physical or Pinterest vision board, or a set of 3–7 values that are important to you.
One of the ways we’ve approached the long-term vision aspect is simply creating dream or bucket lists:
You don’t have to do this step every year because it typically doesn’t change much year over year.
Understanding each person’s long term desires sets a good foundation going into planning. If you have kids that are big enough to take part, include them too.
Work on your visions independently and then share them with each other.
Two activities I like are:
- Values identification like the processes described in MindTools or PsychCentral (I find writing out your peak experiences particularly useful, but there are lots of quicker exercises Google can point you to), and
- Detailed visioning like Debbie Millman’s 10-year plan exercise.
This year, my partner used the 10-year exercise and I went with a set of guiding themes:
Step #2 — The Annual Plan
This is the core of the planning process.
If you were to try only one piece, I’d suggest this one.
We break our review into 3 parts, with each part usually taking its own session.
Part 1: Year in Review — We usually dedicate our first session to this step.
- What were the best parts and worst parts this year?
- What worked and what didn’t?
- What were energy gainers and drainers?
- How are we feeling about each category of our life? Where do we want to invest in improvements? Use a Life Wheel template for this.
- How did the division of labour feel? Are there changes we should make? I recommend using a Household Task division template.
- Reviewing last year — Did we accomplish what we set out to? Why or why not?
We come to our meeting (I feel weird calling this time with my partner a meeting, but that’s basically what it is) prepared with our independent notes answering the first three questions and filling out the task division template.
We cover some of this in our quarterly reviews throughout the year, so it usually goes pretty quickly but it’s fun to look back on the full year together.
Part 2: Outlining This Year’s Plan
Based on the long-term vision(s) we established, we outline our objectives for this year across a set of core categories. Yours may be different than ours are.
Here’s an example:
Here are some real life examples of my bucketing into themes from past years:
Part 3: Putting it All on the Board
Once we have our objectives for the year outlined, we review them together and talk about how we can fit them in.
This can be a tough discussion, especially if it feels like one person needs more resources or has bigger desires than the other.
We try to stay open and use framing like “How could we make that happen?” or “What’s an option C?” instead of shutting things down. If we get stuck, we take a break.
Once we have a good start on our plans for the year, we group them into quarterly buckets, and start putting things on a physical calendar, using sticky notes so we can move things around.
A physical calendar allows us to see the full year.
Using different colours for different categories clearly shows exactly how we’re planning to spend the year and makes it way more obvious how balanced things are.
Scheduling things in is critical to making sure they actually happen. The sticky notes can still be moved around, but at least they are all on the board.
If our priorities for the year include habit changes that don’t really go into the calendar (drink more water, read everyday etc.), we use add them to a tracker and put it on the fridge.
Step #3 — Quarterly Reviews
To keep aligned, we revisit our plan on a quarterly basis.
Two things happen in our quarterly reviews:
- We go through the life wheel as an anchor for our discussion around how we are doing and where we may need to make adjustments. In addition to going through each section of the life wheel, we also add up the total score, understanding that sometimes one area may be gaining at the expense of another, but overall we want to be sustaining or improving our scores.
- We review the calendar and move things around as needed to ensure we’re aligned and scheduled for the next quarter.
Not super romantic, but super effective level-setting.
That’s it! That’s the plan!
It results in a life that I love and am excited about and a partnership I feel bought into and supported by.
I hope it gives you all the clarity, alignment, and intention you need to move through this one precious life with optimism and purpose ❤.
We’re always learning. Let me know what works for you, or if you have any suggestions for us!
