Quarterly Planning Process in 7 easy steps

Twelve months is so long.
Yet it seems so short when at the end of the year, you wish you had more time to achieve more. 

What if we don’t need to plan a year, and plan three months a time instead?

My last annual plan was in 2022. Since then I stuck with quarterly planning and never looked back.

So here I am sharing my weekly planning process, hoping it will help you too, the way it helped me.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains Affiliate Links, which means I receive commission, at no extra cost to you, when you make purchase using those affiliate links. Here’s my full Disclaimer.

What is quarterly planning? 

Maybe it’s just me and I don’t know why, but when I think about planning on a quarterly basis, I always think that it’s a business thing. 

I’m imagining a business management team holding a quarterly planning meeting agenda.
Talking about business strategy, and quarterly objective of the entire company. 

So “businessy” right? 

But…..I guess life is a business too. Wouldn’t you agree?

For a business to have better outcomes, such as achieving company goals, planning and strategy is a must. 

Same thing with life, to have positive results and for all the amazing things to happen, we need to have a plan.
For me, detailed plans are ideal but if you’re not a planner, any type of plan as long as it’s intentional is ok too. 

Some people plan for 5 to 10 years but if you’re like me, I do better with a 90-day plan or quarter plan. 

So what’s quarterly planning? 

Quarterly planning is a type of planning that’s focused on setting goals, milestones, and actionable steps to achieve a specific target at the end of three months.
It’s a planning process that’s done in three-month periods, four times a year. 

Quarter 1 

The first quarter is from January to March 

Quarter 2 

The second quarter is from April to June 

Quarter 3 

The third quarter is from July to September 

Quarter 4 

The fourth quarter is from October to December

Benefits of Quarterly Planning

There are so many benefits when you plan in three-month periods.
A quarter roadmap significantly impact your results. And it’s an ideal way to execute your action items to achieve your short-term goals.
The fact that everything (the planning and execution) happens in just three months, it’s easy to monitor if you’re still moving in the right direction. 

Here’s what I love about planning on a quarterly basis. 

More flexibility and realistic assessment 

Tomorrow has no promise.
Anything can change in the shortest time you can imagine. With a shorter time frame in planning quarterly, you can adjust your actions and decisions in a shorter period, so things don’t drift too far to deep for too long.

There’s nothing wrong with yearly planning but it involves more uncertainties.
So breaking the year into quarters allows for a more accurate and realistic assessment of where you are and what can be achieved. 

Real-time Course Correction 

If you set a yearly goal, and realised that it’s not the right goal or that you need adjustment with your strategy, you may not know this until much later.
Quarterly planning enables quicker course corrections, helping you to stay on track. 

Focus on Short-term Milestones

Quarterly planning focuses more on short-term milestones, and this is motivating.
Within that time frame, as you achieve each milestone, even the smallest one gives you a sense of accomplishment.
You’ll maintain momentum.
Additionally, you’ll feel more confident because achieving a milestone or even a mini goal a proof that you’re capable of making making things happen. 

Enhanced Goal Alignment

Quarterly planning is of course done with quarterly reset or review, which helps you maintain alignment of your action steps and the big picture.
The quarterly reset while doing a quarter plan allows you to refine your approach and strategy over time. 
Check out my quarterly reset here.

Less Overwhelm and Increased Accountability

If you’re like me, the prospect of planning an entire year completely feels overwhelming.
So quarterly planning is more appealing to me.
I break down a big goal and turn it into more manageable smaller chunks and suddenly, I’m not overwhelmed anymore.
The overwhelming action plans now become doable and achievable. 

7 Steps to Quarterly Planning Process

Here’s the process I follow when planning quarterly. I’ll expand on them shortly.

1. Review previous quarter
2. Decide your focus areas for 3 months
3. Create monthly goals
4. Turn monthly goals into projects
5. Make a project plan
6. Schedule weekly tasks
7. Plan you day

One: Review the previous quarter 

Whether it’s Annual Planning, Monthly Planning, Weekly Planning, or Daily Planning, it’s a good idea to start with reflection first.
You can plan more effectively if you know where you’ve been, and where you’re at during the planning process.
How would you know what needs improvement when you don’t know what didn’t work well? 

If this is your first time. you can even stretch it a bit by going high level with your reflection.
Go beyond the last 3 months. Review your core values. Be crystal clear about what’s important to you.
What are your long-term goals?
This is helpful because these are the data you can use to plan for the new quarter. 

I’m sharing my favorite reflection questions to get you started.

1. How was the last quarter?
2. What goals did you achieve?
3. How many projects did you complete?
4. What are your favorite moments, people, moments, and things?
5. How can you make the next quarter better than the previous quarter? 

Two: Decide your areas of focus

My favorite areas to focus on every quarter are Well-being, Family/Home, and business.
Your areas of focus will depend on what’s important to you.
Maybe it’s career, money, health, relationships, or passion.
The areas of focus are going to be your anchor.
So every decision making and actions need to be intentional and related directly or indirectly to these areas of focus.

Three: Create monthly goals

Once you have the areas of focus all set, it’s time to create monthly goals. 
I love setting one big goal for each area so I’ll have 3 big goals altogether.
And at the end of the quarter I reassess these goals.
Most of the time I just migrate them to the next quarterly goals-setting session. 

Four: Turn monthly goals into weekly tasks

For a goal to happen. It needs to be broken down.
If your goal is to cook the yummiest fried chicken. You can’t just cook the chicken in one step.
To cook the chicken, there are steps you need to complete first, then you can cook the chicken.
Maybe you need to search for the best recipe first, then go to the supermarket to buy the ingredients, and so on. 

It’ll help if I tell you what I think about goals breaking them down and turning them into achievable steps. 

I’m so grateful I’ve met Dr Fran Whitaker of the Happy Journals PLR Club.
She patiently and lovingly guided me so I could have the best of the best ways of setting intentional goals. 

The Goal – the desired outcome (broad idea) This is the big goal. 

The Mini goals – the smaller and more specific version of the goal, that tells you what the goal is, why you want it, and when you want to achieve it.

The Projects- Projects are planned efforts to get something done within a certain time container.
I like to think of it as something that can be completed by doing a group of tasks. These tasks are inside each milestone that needs to be achieved to accomplish your a goal.

So, I set a goal every quarter.
Create mini goals for that goal every month. Then turn into weekly tasks (sometimes I call then mini goals).

It’s helpful to remember that a project can be completed by doing more than one action steps while a task can be completed by doing a single action step. 

Five: Create a plan 

The next step is to plan your action steps.
When do you intend to do the task?
How are you going to monitor your progress and when are you going to assess and adjust?
Are you planning to reward yourself every time you accomplish a mini goal?
How are you going to show up and stay accountable? 

Six: Schedule weekly tasks

At this stage, you have already broken down a goal into a single step.
You have a plan of action. The next sensible step now is to schedule what day you’re going to do the tasks by planning your week.
Schedule weekly tasks.

Seven: Plan your day 

The last step is planning your day.
So, after scheduling when you would be completing your task, it’s important to plan your day, not to the last minute if granular planning stresses you out.
I plan my day but I keep it loose and as flexible as possible.

My ideal day has 3 important elements: 

• clear intention for the day
• the 3 most important tasks (these are the task from Step 6) 
• time to play with my Moon, rest, create, and connect with loved ones.

Your next steps

You just learned how to plan quarterly by doing the suggested 7 steps above.
There’s just one thing left to do.
And that’s to pick up your choice of planner and plan for the next quarter.
When you’re reading this and you’re not exactly at the end of a current quarter it’s ok. 
You can create monthly goals instead for now and then .wait for the end of the current quarter to start planning for the next quarter.
I’ve actually updated my quarterly planning and review in 2026.
Check my 5-step quarterly reset for a more present life here.