Take a Personal Retreat Day
The powerful practice of reviewing your life plan seasonally
I started doing seasonal planning a couple of years ago, and part of my planning process is a personal retreat. If you feel adrift or stuck, a personal retreat day can help you get back on track.
I plan my retreats around the change of the seasons. For my summer retreat, I took a notebook to a cafe and worked through a series of writing prompts. This gave me the perspective to reset and decide what to focus on for the next three months. In the spring and fall, I offer an Equinox Planning workshop to walk through the process with others.
My process is evolving as I experiment with different prompts and activities, but I wanted to share some ideas to plan your own personal retreat.
Nurture yourself
A personal retreat day is an opportunity for self-care and creativity. Go to a place that makes you feel calm, away from the chaos of your daily life. Whether that is a public library or an Airbnb, pick a spot where you know you can focus.
Make sure you have meals and snacks pre-planned and prepared. Bring a water bottle and beverages that will make the day feel special.
Take time off from your day job or set aside your typical routine. You may need to block your calendar, find childcare, and inform your partner. Planning ahead is key.
Ask yourself what will make this retreat feel nourishing for you. Do you want to go somewhere surrounded by nature, or would you rather spend a few hours in a noisy cafe or a peaceful public library? Do you want to eat super-healthy food or treat yourself to a cupcake?
Bring along your favorite writing tools and art supplies if you want to turn this into a creative practice. You could build a collage or make art to represent your vision for your life. Or you could create a mind map of colorful sticky notes. Make this process fun and creative!
Look back
First, do a little reflective writing. How is everything going in your life? What do you love about it? What’s bothering you?
Take time to celebrate your wins and accomplishments. Looking back over your completed to-do lists and calendar, you may find that you did more than you thought in the past three months. Write down your biggest wins and give yourself a gold star! Literally, buy a package of gold stars if that resonates with you.
Then, reflect on your challenges. What did not go as hoped? What got in the way of doing what you intended to do? What is not working? More importantly, why? Some challenges are out of your control, and if can be useful to recognize what you cannot change.
On the other hand, some challenges may be the product of being overly ambitious or setting unrealistic expectations. Or maybe you don’t have the structure or support you need in certain areas. Try to identify the root causes of the challenges you face.
Take at least an hour or two to review the past few months and reflect on what you have accomplished. Then, take a short walk to allow your brain some processing time.
Look forward
You need a vision for where you are heading to make a plan for the next three months. I use a values review to reflect on the important aspects of my identity that I want to cultivate. I also audit my allocation of time and energy across all areas of my life to identify where I want to increase effort and what I want to do less.
With that information, I write down visions of what I can accomplish in the next few years. Then, I ask myself what actions I can take in the next three months to make progress toward my visions. These actions may be projects, tasks, or habits.
This process can take several hours if you walk through every step, but if you already have a pretty good idea of where you are headed and what needs to happen, you may need less time.
Write down your intentions
What do you want to change in the next three months? Be as specific as possible and write down your action plan to make these changes.
Depending on your intention, you will have different action plans. Some intentions are best changed by habits. Would an earlier bedtime, a new workout routine, or a creative practice lead you closer to your vision? Commit to making a daily habit related to what you want to change.
If your intention is something you can finish — like a household project or a novel manuscript — then you need a project plan. It’s easy to come up with a goal, but creating a realistic project plan takes a bit more effort. This means understanding the scope of work. How much time and money will you allocate? What help or resources do you need to enlist? When will you finish?
Not everything you do is a project. Things like making a dental appointment, mowing the lawn, or reaching out to a friend don’t need elaborate plans; you need to remember to do them and fit them in around your projects and habits so they don’t eat up all your time.
Now that you have set some intentions, take another break. If you’re fatigued, you may wait until the next day to do the final part.
Prepare for action
Based on your intentions, narrow your focus. What would be easy to accomplish in the next three months? Try not to set overly ambitious expectations. Remember that life will continue to happen despite your plans, so you need some buffer around your projects and habits.
I try to narrow my focus to no more than three main projects and three new or improved habits in a given season. If you have a very large or complex project, you may want to make that your singular focus.
Set up some form of habit-tracking for your intended habits. This can be a paper planner, an app, or recurring tasks in a task manager. The key is to form the habit of tracking the habits, at least until they are automatic.
Project plans should be tracked in a tool that allows you to create tasks and sub-tasks and assign due dates. Whether this is analog or digital is up to you, but there are plenty of tools available for project management.
Finally, capture all one-time and recurring tasks and set up reminders. It can be helpful to tackle smaller tasks in batches by scheduling periodic admin blocks on your calendar to get the little stuff out of the way.
Weekly and daily reviews and planning will be your best friends if you are committed to meeting your intentions. I will write about those in another post. In the meantime, enjoy your personal retreat day!
