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A quarterly review is a more extended version of the weekly review. A weekly review is akin to climbing to the top of the trees and peer at the forest.

In the quarterly review you will be taking a hot air balloon up to a thousand feet or so and see how the forest fits into the overall landscape. I always try to get away from the office for my quarterly review. I want to get away from the phones, the drop-in visitors, and the hustle and bustle of office life. I find a place, time and space to be alone. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just relatively private and quiet.

I follow a simple agenda:

Review my life plan

This is a written document that I have maintained for years. I maintain eight accounts: God, Self, Spouse, Children, Finances, Career, Friends and Ministry. (Yours may be different.)

For each of these accounts I have an envisioned future, a statement of purpose, my current reality, and my specific commitments
Review my business vision

Again, it’s easy to get lost in strategies and operational detail. However, my quarterly review is an opportunity to reconnect with my business vision. What am I building towards? What does the business look like in five years?

Note that I don’t create my vision during this time; I have already done that previously. During this time I simply want to review the written document, try to visualise it, and make sure I am crystal clear — to the extent possible — on where I am going.

Write goals for the next quarter

Now I start writing. I want to take the review of my life plan and my business vision and translate it into specific, 90-day objectives.
I don’t want a long list of to-do items. That’s too tactical for this exercise. Instead, I want a short list of the five to seven most important things I can do in the next quarter to move towards my personal and professional vision. I maintain two lists: one for my personal life and one for my professional life.

Work on high impact projects

I can usually go through the above exercise in about four hours. This leaves me with eight hours of sleep, another eight hours to work on really important, high impact projects.

These are the ones that are difficult to get to and do well in the middle of everything else. I usually come into the quarterly review with a specific prioritised list of these.
If you want to start doing a quarterly review, I strongly suggest that you schedule these in advance. If you wait until you have a break in your schedule, you’ll never get to it.

You have to make appointments with yourself and schedule other things around it. This is the key to proactive, self-management.

l Nyaradzo Mavindidze, a motivational speaker, is the Managing Consultant at Avodah Consultants, which specialises in soft skills training and coaching. For feedback email [email protected]