Q3 Planning Deepdive

During my few very much needed days off, I really enjoyed doing some serious planning including -

Q3 (July - Sept) planning

July planning

Realistic ideal week

Some planning rhythms

Loved diving into this beauty

Q3 comprises E’s school Term 3 and school holiday, my first half of Semester 2 for my university teaching, a lot of extra curriculars for E including Acro (gymnastics) and Scouts with a lot of weekend activities, my parents being away for 3 weeks in August, and us away on holiday the last week of September.

So, given it’s a busy season, I’ve gone fairly light on additional goals. Last Quintile was.., too much. It was my first teaching at there is a steep learning curve, as well as simply learning the workload across the Semester. This time I’ll be smarter about my expectations and what I take on. I’m also NOT going to plan anything too ambitious with the house or my personal challenges. Small, achievable goals are the way forward. So, here are a selection-

Personal:

• Go to gym once! Obviously I hope to go more than once. But I’m hoping setting such a small goal will kickstart some momentum here.

• Book a dentist appointment (it’s been 18 months since last check up)

• Dailyish reading and walking - I want to get back into reading, had a couple of months where it was hit and miss which resulted in too much scrolling! I have some good books lined up which should help. The walking is generally easy because I enjoy it and the weather is delightful right now.

• Blog x 2 per week

• Write daily in my 5 year journal (I’ve been inconsistent with this so far, but getting into a nice routine now).

Home/Family:

• Plan our family holiday! We are heading to Port Macquarie on NSW mid North Coast for a week in late September. A couple of weeks ago Al and I looked at each and said “We need a holiday!” One which involves lying by a pool, walking along a beach, relaxing. It’s been a long time since we left our local region for that kind of holiday (perhaps since we went to Fiji two years ago!). An international holiday is not on the cards this year, so somewhere we could drive is better. Our good friends live in Port Macquarie and we haven’t seen them in a few years. And weve never been to this beachside town! It’s about a 7 hour drive, so long but ok if it’s broken up over a couple of days. So I’ve booked us an apartment in a resort complex for 6 nights, and we can road trip there and back, giving us 8 days away. Should be just what we need!

• Install new curtains in the bedrooms. The kids’ rooms’ blinds don’t work well and are very old, and our curtains are not our style. This is a small, affordable job (we’ll get some ready made), so it’s my one house goal for this season)

• Eat dinner as a family most nights. We have a nice dining table yet we don’t always use it. Lately we’ve been trying to eat up at the table all together - it encourages the kids to eat more, and it’s a nice family activity (we each share our favourite things about the day).

• 2 x date nights with Al - probably one before my parents go away, and then one when they come back.

Work:

• Write research papers 9-12 hours per week (I’ve mapped out time blocks for this a few mornings a week)- planning to get all the “backlog” of papers submitted for publication

• Create a Realistic Ideal week- done! I created one in one of the July 2026 weeks of my new Erin Condren, as I’m sure I’d have a new planner by then. I’ll do this for each Quintile. The goal is to MOSTLY corral my work into work hours (marking weeks there may be a couple of hours on the weekend needed but that’s ok).

• Submit 1 small grant only

To help me in all this, I have my Erin Condren hourly lifeplanner, and my EC petite daily planner (quarterly books). Loving them!

Daily planning in my petite planner

Anyone else done any planning deepdives lately? Happy Tuesday everyone.