Yearlong Planning and Organization with Guest Kristin Rivera

We are a few weeks into 2019 and it's that time of year when everyone's focused on goal setting and planning (or trying to make sure they're still sticking to their goals)! Last month we talked in our mastermind Facebook group www.growwithusmastermind.com about everyone's goals for the year. Planning and getting organized is the key to achieving those goals. If you haven't already, join our group to find the support and accountability you need to get it done. 
Angie and I are coming in strong to 2019! We both ended up taking pretty much the entire month of December off from our TpT businesses. Some of it was intentional and some was due to all the illness that floats around this time of year. But, regardless of the reason, it gave us the break we needed to clear our heads, do some goal setting, and create plans for the new year.
Sharing our goals
This year I have several goals. I'm working to switch from working full-time to working part-time. That doesn't mean I want to scale back my business, just the time I'm spending on it. My goal is to take every Friday off and to stop working by 3:30 pm each day. This will allow me to devote my time to my family once they arrive home.

When it comes to my business I have the following goals:

Organize business and tax documents
Be consistent on my blog and social media
Focus on one big project instead of a bunch of tiny ones

Angie shared that her goals for the year are to blog and email consistently, spend two to three hours a day working at her treadmill desk, and stop working each day when her kids and husband come home.

In our Facebook group discussion, almost everyone mentioned a goal that was related to blogging. Angie and I decided our goals were to focus on consistency instead of setting a goal like 'posting 1x a week'. We want to set ourselves up to succeed this year. If you are just starting out blogging I encourage you to listen to our blogging series we did (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).
Let's get planning!
We were super excited to have Kristin Rivera from One Stop Teacher Shop as a guest on the podcast this week. She is the most organized person that I know. She's a planning expert and great at organizing in advance to have more time available. And, I absolutely love her planner (there are print and digital versions) which you can check out at One Stop Planner Shop.

Kristin joined us to share her process for year-long planning.
Why you want to create a year-long plan
Have you ever sat down to a computer to start working and just didn't know where to start? Or, you bounced around from one idea to the next and found that you worked all day and accomplished nothing? That's why you need a year-long plan!

Kristin started planning like this because she knew she needed to be more productive and that when there was a plan she was able to get more done and have more time for her family.

Having a plan saves you time by helping you know what to work on. It's easy to be busy but when you have a plan you get a lot more accomplished. It helps you work on things that matter. I discovered this for myself when I took off the month of December. There were lots of little tasks that I was busy doing last year that I didn't do in December and my business kept running. It showed me this year I could choose a few of them to focus on and let the o