Planning for the Impossible

Planning for the impossible requires intention.

It requires a level of dedication, focus, and commitment that not many people are willing to give. I get it… there are other things that feel easier, more exciting, or fun. There’s a certain kind of comfort in sticking to what you’re good at, never venturing outside of what’s known and familiar… whether that’s community, work, lifestyle, or relationships.

But creating your impossible future—whether that’s having the amazing relationship you desire, creating the income and impact you crave, getting your health in order or losing 50lbs, and moving yourself into an entirely new way of being—it requires intention.

I intend to make everything I desire happen this year. I am committed to creating the “impossible” in all areas of my life. I have already done so in several ways… and I’m not stopping for anything.

Which is why planning for the impossible is key.

In today’s video, I’m sharing more about what specifically I’m doing to ENSURE that I give my all to everything I’m doing.

Click below to watch now…

I wanna share today how I am planning to do the impossible, which doesn’t really feel impossible I guess but is kind of overwhelming at times.

You can watch some of the previous videos if you’re not clear what it is that I’m doing but I am growing my design business, I am launching a journey mapping program, and I am publishing my next book, the Unravel Book. And all of that is gonna happen over the next few months.

I talk in some of the past videos about how I’ve been creating space in my life, how I’ve been really focusing on different aspects of my life and my work and my relationships and my day to day in order to make that possible. There are a lot of other little things going on as well and there are projects that will come to the forefront after those primary things are completed, but those are really my focal points for the next several months.

Today I wanted to share how I’m really organizing everything. In one of the earlier videos I talked about how I wanted to create a project board. And the purpose of that board was really to visually organize everything that needs to get done so that I can see it and I can understand it and also so I can share with you so you guys can also see my progress.

Before I left for Italy I made a video and I talked about how I wanted to create a project planning board. And the reason for that is that my brain organizes information differently and I’m definitely more visual at the moment. So I really need to see where things are at to kinda understand, wrap my brain around all the moving parts and pieces. And so I’m doing that in a couple different ways that I’ll share today. And while I was in Italy I had a little bit of downtime and I actually started, being the nerd that I am, I actually started kind of mapping out what I wanted that project board to look like.

When I worked at a startup several years ago when I first moved back to Colorado, we used a specific type of project planning and that was called SCRUM. I don’t think it’s an acronym. I don’t really know what it means. I just know that it’s a thing. So I did a whole lot of googling. I looked at a bunch of different SCRUM boards. I kind of got a sense of what are the moving parts and pieces, what do I really wanna be tracking using this method, and just started playing around in one of my design programs and kind of mapped out what I wanted. Once I had that I went out and I got all the parts and pieces.

So I got myself a whiteboard. I got myself a little calendar board. I got some tape and some markers and a bunch of post-its. And I set out and actually built out the board. And because I don’t have a drill, it’s sitting over there on the floor and let’s take a look at what’s on it.

Here’s the board itself. It has three simple columns: to do, doing, done. And I have broken it out by the design business, Call of the Void, and then there’s Journey Mapping program stuff and book stuff. So everything has its own color because obviously, I’m a nerd. The beauty of the board is that you get to overload the to do. So you put all the things that need to be done over here. And there’s only ever one thing in the doing. Now, obviously, there’s more than one and that is because I am breaking it out based on am I doing any outreach to grow the brand, what is the vlog that I’m doing this week, what is the article that I’m writing, and business building stuff right there.

Business building stuff right there, like we are in the process of trademarking Call of the Void and then Journey Mapping. Right now on my plate is the sales page and the email for this week that goes out to my list article is a pre-launch email. The book is very simple. I kept it very simple for now. It is just write the first draft, which is 1000 words a day and I will be tracking how many words I write up here and whether or not I wrote every day. What it really helps you do is get a grasp of where things are overall.

So obviously there’s a whole lot to do. Not a lot has gotten done. But this is all there is for me to focus on this week right now. Any time I sit down to work, these are my priorities for each different focus area. Now I can come up with new ideas. I can definitely see that there’s a lot of other stuff to be done. I add new ideas all the time. But they stay over here until it’s their turn to be prioritized. The board itself is more of a high level look at the different moving parts and pieces. Writing an email for the pre-launch, creating a module of content for the actual program, writing the book, editing the book, all of those things have a lot of sub-tasks beneath them.

And so what I’ve done with the board is really create those buckets of focus areas. I’m keeping the actual sub-tasks really well organized in Asana, which is the project management tool that I love to use for my business and it just makes tracking everything really really easy. It has a lot of great features but it functions like a to-do list and you can have tasks with sub-tasks inside of them and it just, again, for my brain, it works really well to organize those things. So what I do is I take one of those high bucket items and I move them into the doing column and I know that that is my focus right now and I’m able to then go into Asana and say what actually needs to happen on a very detailed level so that there’s something that I can do every single day to move that task from doing into done.

Now it’s really fairly simple and fairly straightforward. I took a concept that already exists and I modified it very slightly, very minimally, for my needs in order to have something that I can look at every single day and be reminded of the many many many things that need to get done, but also in a way that keeps me from feeling overwhelmed. Because there is a lot to do in the next several months but when I’m able to know that this week I am focused on this for the design business, this for Call of the Void, this for Journey Mapping, and this for the book, easy peasy.

I keep it very broken down in Asana so that it’s never a matter of feeling overwhelmed and I don’t know what to do next. It’s broken down in such great detail that it’s literally a bunch of items that I can say I can do this in the next 15 minutes, I can do this today, I can do this in this block of time. If I get to an appointment early and I have 15 minutes I pull out my phone and I use the Evernote app to keep all of my writing in one place and I start working on the blog post that needs to be written or I can open up Google Documents that’s also synced to my phone and I can work on the sales page a little bit.

So I am making better use of my time and I’m being more efficient because I have everything so well organized. Despite everything that is going on, everything that I’m working on, I am able to be very very focused and efficient in a bunch of different chunks of time. So some of them are small. Some of them are those little windows that I find where I can just pull out my phone and I can work on something that needs to be written or I can go into Asana and I can schedule things. I am able to stay constantly in contact with my plans for all of these different projects. And I’m making better use of my time.

Like I know that if I wanna hit my goals I have to absolutely do this, this week. I have to absolutely write this post this week. That has to go out to keep everything on track. So it helps me keep really really focused. It helps me be more efficient with my time. It helps give me things to do when I have empty pockets if I want them.

And it’s actually creating a lot more open time in my life. I am going to hot yoga every day, which, if you know me, you know that that is a huge deal. I’m making time for all of the things that nurture and nourish me so that when I am in those really focused and targeted chunks of time I’m able to be really productive and I’m able to get things done without working myself into the ground or sacrificing the things that make me happy or completely hunkering down and disappearing from my life and the relationships that matter to me.

That’s what I have for you today. You will be seeing a lot of the project board. I’ll be giving updates on what I’m working on and yeah, I will catch you next week in another video.

Tell me, what are you doing to be more intentional in the way you live your life, show up in your relationships, honor your health, and commit to your big goals and dreams? What are you doing and what actions are you taking to make what you desire inevitable?