The Equinox Planning System
In a nutshell, Equinox planning is a system for chill productivity built around seasonal, monthly, weekly, and daily processes. Twice a year, I host a free workshop introducing the tools and methods I use.
You’re probably thinking, “Seasonal, monthly, weekly, and daily processes don’t sound very chill. Is this some type A, overachiever nonsense?”
It is not. While I’ve been known to be a high achiever, I am about as far from type A as you can get. I am disorganized. I am lazy. I am uninterested in achieving success in the traditional capitalist paradigm. This is why I needed to create my system to get stuff done while maintaining a loose grip on goals and staying aligned with my values.
Building Blocks of Equinox Planning
Equinox planning is more than the system or process for planning and implementing plans. It’s a way to stay aligned with what matters. And what matters for you is a function of what I call the 3 Vs.
The 3 Vs (or Ps)
- Values (principles): What matters to you? Are you focused on family? Do you love innovation? Is humor a daily necessity? Are you called to help the needy? What are the principles that you live by?
- Virtues (powers): What are you good at doing? What are your innate talents, specialized skills, and superpowers? The more you use your virtues, the stronger they become.
- Vision (purpose): Given your unique values and innate virtues, what will you do? Looking 5 or 10 years into the future, what could you accomplish?
Energy Zones
You have limited time, energy, and attention, and you already spend all of it each day. No extra bucket of time is waiting for you to assign it to a new project. No reserve of energy will appear. If you want to add something, you have to let go of something else. I look at these energy zones each season and decide where I want to spend more or less time, energy, and attention.
For anything I want to increase, I look for a way to decrease something else. When evaluating your own energy zones, be realistic about how you currently spend your time, energy, and attention. What are your favorite distractions and rabbit holes? Tracking your time for a week or so can give you an objective view of where your time and energy go.
- Wellness
- Relationships
- Paid work
- Fun & play
- Home
- Service
- Creative work
- Spirituality
- Planning
- Distractions
Project plans
A goal is just a project without a plan. No matter how SMART your goal is, if you don’t have a clear, tactical action plan, it still lives in the realm of wishful thinking. Any good project manager knows how important it is to accurately scope and document your plan before starting a project. In general, a project plan may include:
- Purpose or end goal: What is the outcome you hope to achieve?
- Overview: What needs to happen to achieve the outcome?
- Risk assessment: What will likely impede progress? What losses or harms could come if you succeed? If you fail?
- Milestones: What are the key steps in the process?
- Resources & team: What time, money, and help from others do you need to finish the project?
- Timeline: When will you reach each milestone?
- Delivery: List all milestone deliverables with clear guidance for completion. How will you know when the project is done?
Keep a project list somewhere that you can review it when doing your seasonal, monthly, and weekly planning.
Seasonal process
Around the change of the seasons, I block out a half-day for reflection and planning. If you can afford a weekend retreat or a full day away from work, even better! This is the process I walk through in my spring and fall Equinox Planning workshops.
Reflection
- Wins, accomplishments, and events: What happened in the past three months?
- Challenges, surprises, changes of plans: What did not go as expected?
- Habit review: What’s going well? Which habits need attention? Which habits do you want to decrease or drop?
- Project review: What progress was made on projects? Is anything off-track? Can you drop or defer any projects?
- Energy zone review: Score your energy zones 1–10 according to how much time, energy, and attention you spend on them. Determine where to shift energy if needed.
- In general, are you living according to the principles and intentions that matter to you?
Plan
- Brain dump all current work and upcoming projects, then decide which three you will focus on for the season. This is easy if you keep a running project list.
- Make lists of habits to stop, start, continue, or increase, then pick up to three to focus on for the season.
- Update your project backlog list with any new project that does not make your top three. Consider adding one from your backlog to active projects whenever you finish one.
- Make a list of miscellaneous to-dos and undone tasks unrelated to specific projects.
Setup
- Post your active projects and key habits somewhere you will look every day.
- Add at least two tasks or milestones for each active project to your task manager.
- Update your miscellaneous to-dos in your task manager, and delete any that you no longer need to do
- Set up daily tracking for your key habits in a habit-tracking app or on paper
- Create a monthly plan for the season's first month in a planner, calendar, or app.
Monthly Process
The end of the month is a good time to see if you are on track with your plans for the season and write down your monthly plan.
Monthly Review
- Make a list of wins and accomplishments for the month (refer to your weekly reviews). What went well?
- Make a list of challenges and obstacles that came up.
- Identify any changes you want to make in the next month.
Monthly Plan
- Review the priority of projects in progress; determine your top 1–3 projects for the month.
- Identify one habit to make into a monthly challenge or main focus for tracking.
- Write down upcoming events and activities on the calendar of your choice.
Weekly Reset
Each week, schedule time before the first day of your week (I’m in the Monday club on this) to do a GTD-style review and make a plan for next week. I generally do mine on Sunday afternoon or first thing Monday when I have a busy weekend. Some prefer to take time on Friday afternoon to capture any loose ends from the work week.
Weekly Review
Take at most ten minutes to review your week. You can do this on paper or any digital tool you like. I use a Notion database to access and search my notes easily.
- Write down wins and accomplishments (this is handy for monthly and seasonal reviews).
- Write down any challenges and obstacles that came up.
- Write down what you learned from the challenges and obstacles.
- Move any undone tasks into next week’s plan.
Weekly Plan
I use a paper planner for weekly and daily plans and a task manager for tracking all of my tasks and projects. I also keep a project list in a Notion database to track what is in progress, paused, backlogged, or archived.
- Identify up to three top project(s) for the week.
- Make a list of tasks for the week. Include tasks from your top projects and any miscellaneous to-dos.
- Block out time on your calendar for deep, focused, or creative work. Consider joining a co-working group with scheduled sessions to work on your top projects.
- If you have a busy week, it can also help to schedule time blocks for admin and miscellaneous tasks so they don’t pile up.
- Review any upcoming meetings or events and schedule in prep and transit time as needed.
- Decide when to do your habits and block out time for routines if needed. Some helpful routine blocks are first thing in the morning, workday startup, workday shutdown, and bedtime.
- If possible, share your weekly review and plan. Having some planning pals for support and accountability has helped me immensely.
Daily Rituals
Your daily process is where the rubber meets the road. Without simple, daily routines, all of your best-laid plans go off the rails quickly.
Start Your Day
- Pick a few habits to stack at the start of your day. A good principle is to pick one habit each for body, mind, and spirit to do before life closes in. Some options include meditation, prayer, reading, yoga, journaling, stretching, and working out.
- Build your morning routine around what you already do, like brushing your teeth, showering, taking supplements, etc.
- You may need to get up earlier to accommodate new habits before your workday starts. If so, make sure you also go to bed earlier to allow for eight hours of sleep.
Plan Your Day
Once you are done with your morning ritual and properly caffeinated, decide what you will do and write down your plan. This could be a simple list on a scrap of paper, a “today” list in your task manager, or a granular time-block plan in a planner or calendar app.
- Pick 1–3 top tasks, even if nothing else gets done.
- Review your schedule and decide when you will do your top tasks. Pick times when you know your energy will be highest.
- Decide when you have time for email, miscellaneous tasks, and general admin work.
Review Your Day
I only do a workday shutdown on weekdays, but I keep up with tracking and gratitude every day.
- Mark off what got done today and your completed habits.
- Move undone tasks to tomorrow’s list or move to a future date.
- Write down some things that went well or made you happy (AKA a gratitude list).
- Check your schedule for tomorrow and move things around if needed.
End Your Day
One of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made was setting a 9 p.m. bedtime. You may want to go to bed later (or even earlier?) depending on your chronotype. Your bedtime doesn’t matter as long as it affords you at least 8 hours in bed, preferably sleeping.
- Pick a few habits to end your day and prepare you for sleep. I like stretching and reading. Some pray before bed. A cup of herbal tea is nice (but you may have to pee more in the night). Meditation can help you drift off.
- Stay away from screens and bright lights for at least an hour before you want to sleep.
- Don’t eat anything or drink alcohol 2–3 hours before you want to sleep. Avoid alcohol completely if possible.
- Try to avoid cortisol-raising activities like intense action movies and watching the news in the evening.
This is a Lot
After writing it all down, I can see it may feel undoable if you start from scratch. It took me about three years to build up the system to the point that it feels mostly effortless. It also feels necessary. I can now see how much of my prior angst came from not feeling comfortable with infrastructure for my own life. I thought freedom and spontaneity made me happy, but it made me miserable.
Start small. Just list projects and habits and see how writing it all down feels. Then, build in a weekly process of review and planning. If you never get beyond a weekly process, you will still have a better handle on planning than most.
If you want to take the next step, join me for an Equinox Planning workshop. Twice a year, I walk through the seasonal process with a few planning pals, and some of us meet monthly to check in on our progress.
