Hello darlings!
As I've mentioned in the previous blog posts leading up to this one, planning is the trickiest part of running a small business with chronic fatigue. How do you set goals if you have no idea where your energy levels are going to be at?
Over the past couple of years I have experimented with various techniques and I am pretty happy with how I plan and set goals- that's not to say that everything is perfect and it won't ever change again, but I feel I've finally reached a place where things make sense. At least inasmuch as anything can make sense when you have a condition that makes the whole world topsy-turvy.
Of course, most of this will be subjective and relevant only to my business, but I hope that there are at least some kernels information that you find useful and can apply to your own business.
My Pinboards

Over the years I have discovered that I work to a plan better when I can see it. I've kept schedules in folders and cupboards before and I find that I just always forget to reference it. The solution- pinboards! (Whiteboards can also be used for the same purpose, I simply prefer a pinboard.)
Here, I have my daily plan (three things, bottom right), weekly plan (centre, calendar) and monthly/quarterly plan (top halves of both pinboards) on display. The pinboard means that these plans are not set in stone and can be changed at any point.
Let's go into each aspect a little bit so you understand my methodology!
The daily plan follows the 'three things' rule and it's on a whiteboard so I can wipe it clean at the end of every day and write a new list. I can also wipe things off during the day if I'm feeling very productive. What I accomplish I then log in my daily planner (see below).
The weekly plan has the whole week on display and I use post-its to outline what I want to accomplish on each day. Oftentimes projects will take a few days to complete, hence the absent post-its. Again, this is very easily alterable.
The month plan takes up the majority of the right pinboard and gives broad strokes about what I want to accomplish that month. I have categories to organise my thoughts; e.g. blog posts, orders and social media posts. I put large events (such as weddings, day trips or events) on there to remind myself when I might be lower energy, and also put very small things to make myself feel accomplished when I tick them off.
I also have two other months goals outlined on the left pinboard, giving a full quarterly plan in one glance. I like being able to look ahead, but not too far- I don't have the whole year plan up there. But having a couple of months visible means that I can move things around more easily if projects overrun or if I have a bad month.
At the end of every month I shift these plans forward and add the new month. This is a lot of faff with a pinboard, but I quite like the act of transferring things over and it means I can analyse if my plans are realistic or if they need more work.
You'll notice at the bottom of both pinboards I also have useful lists, inspiring quotes and tickets from events I went to recently. I think it makes the board more motivational and not purely business-driven.
Daily/Weekly Plan
The daily plan is perhaps the most subjective of them all. Only you can know how you work best, and keeping diaries and tracking your fatigue levels during the day will give you the best idea of when your most productive times are and when to give yourself a break.
Personally, I have a very light morning because I'm not a morning person, so I spend half an hour in the morning reading for research. I don't force myself to have a quick breakfast and get started if I don't feel like it, it often does more harm than good.
Trying to force myself to do a full days work usually means I accomplish less over the course of the day. If I pick away at things with long breaks in-between the more I get more done!
I also tend to crash at about 3 if I've been doing a solid day of work, so I do something lighter like write or read from 3-4 for a break. Sometimes I need that time to just comatose for a while too, so if I need that I can give that time to myself.

Here I have my daily planner and week plan on the right. Note that the daily planner is just a log of what I've done during the day and not a plan; I bought a page-a-day dairy specifically for this purpose. I have my 'three things' at the top, then I write down (in time blocks) what I did during the day. I also write down how many hours I worked, what I ate for dinner and when I went to bed. If I worked on anything that I need to log for my time sheet I write that at the bottom so it's easy to see.
My weekly to-do has both big and small things that I need to do, both work and non-work related. I love a list so having a list for the week really helps me organise my thoughts.
Monthly Plan

For the month, I mark out four weeks and write down the main things I want to accomplish. With the month, for the moment, I like to plan out two weeks fully. Then I allow one week for a commission (if I don’t get a commission that month then I always have something I can be getting on with!) and one week to allow for a fatigue slump. Again, if I’m doing alright then I always have something to do.
Fridays I have carved out a writing day to work on my book. I got the idea from my tutors at university who often had one or two days off during the week to work on either their book or a further education.
Yearly Plan
At the beginning of the year I make a plan for the year ahead using large A3 sheets of paper.

The same as my pinboards, it has some categories to help organise my thoughts. I've made a section for every month with plenty of space for plans, which I write on post-its that can also be overlapped if there's too many. I’ve separated the year into quarters too to further split up the year.

This I put into a folder once it's been completed so I reference it less often, but it's a good tool to outline the broad strokes of what I want to accomplish over the year. Every time I have to put a new month onto my pinboard I take it out and add what I wanted to accomplish during that month. This is, again, very easy to change and I can switch things out if needed.
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That's how I plan things to help my business run as smoothly as possible with a very unstable captain at the wheel! I hope you found some of these ideas helpful and have a go at implementing them yourself.
Let me know if you found this blog post series useful! It's a little outside of my usual genre but I thought I'd share some things that I'd learnt that I wish I'd known at the beginning of my chronic fatigue journey.
Until next time,
Aisha x
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