November & December are all about creating a 2019 plan. I love breaking open a new planner (my new Ban.do one just arrived!) and dreaming up what the new year will look like. If you haven’t started planning for next year or need some inspiration, hopefully this post is helpful for you! It will keep me accountable for my 2019 plan, too! 😉

It’s easy to get stuck in the weeds with ALL of the things you want to accomplish. I’ll be the first to admit I have let annual planning overwhelm me, but this year I’m aiming for more control. Here are a few ways I’ve kept my 2019 plan manageable, creative, and fun!

Allow for Creativity

I’ve found that creativity is essential for my own personal & business growth. If I’m working in my business rather than on it, I get lost in mundane tasks that don’t excite me. Creativity is key! Pick a time of day when your brain is most clear, and do some big-picture work. Create a giant vision board for your next year. Brain dump everything you want to accomplish. Make a list of dream clients. Do this work first, and you’ll have more clarity on your goals going into next year.

This goes for money goals too! For 2019, I’m attempting to take a more grateful & relaxed approach to money. Rather than focusing solely on a certain number I want to hit, I’m focusing on how I want to feel and the things I want to experience with the help of the money I earn. It’s all about shifting your mindset, which is going to be a continuous practice. One book I’ve found super helpful with this is You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero!

Prioritize!

After you’ve done some dreaming, start prioritizing! I keep a running list of big picture projects, tasks, and ideas in a notebook. It’s been a game-changer to have a dedicated space for these thoughts because tasks pop into my head randomly throughout the day (can anyone relate?!). I took a couple of hours one day to go through this big list and pull out the top priorities. I kept going until I prioritized everything from most important to least important. I likely won’t get to the 2^nd and 3^rd priorities until the new year, but I have peace of mind knowing that my thoughts are organized and will be there when I have space to work on them.

Plan in Quarters

I’m making an effort to look at 2019 from a bird’s eye view and focus on the big-picture items I want to accomplish. I’m looking at major holidays and reviewing the past couple of years for seasonal patterns in my business. I’m considering when I want to launch new collections for the print shop, when I want to market certain types of shoots, and how this will all fit in with the flow of my personal life. From here, I’m breaking down each quarter of the year, which makes me feel much less overwhelmed and more in control.

Be Realistic About Blog & Social Media Planning

Everyone’s favorite, right!? Wrong! For some reason blog & social media planning is a struggle for most entrepreneurs, myself included. Since I started my blog, I found myself finishing blog posts the morning I published and always struggled for new topic ideas. I’d be typing Instagram captions at 10pm right before I went to bed. No good!

For 2019, I asked myself what kind of blog schedule would feel good and realistic. I plan to post once a week and recycle past blog content on social media once or twice a week. Once a month, one of these posts will be cornerstone content, or the content that directly serves my audience with helpful tips and info about shoots. These are always the hardest to come up with and write, so I took an hour to brainstorm as many ideas as I could and narrow down about 15-20 solid blogs that I was excited to write. Now I have these all mapped out for the entire year already! Now that I know exactly what I’m writing each month, I just have to sit down and do it!

What are you doing to plan for 2019?

Let me know in the comments! I’m always up for new ideas & suggestions to make annual planning easier & more successful!