Make it Happen - Planning for non-planners!

How often have you thought about doing something new; about taking a different direction or starting a new venture? And how often does it happen the way you imagined or the way that you planned? Just as importantly, how often does it happen at all!

Over the last 12 months we have been talking about making some significant changes in our lives driven by some of the ideas and dreams about what we really want. Despite this we never really found the time or the energy to make all of the changes that we wanted. It seemed as if there was always ‘one more thing’ to do or one more challenge to overcome.

It’s a common enough dilemma; we imagine that we will be able to do what we want as soon as we have done that or completed this or finished the other. So the real question is ‘how do you get started’ without being drawn into the everyday stuff that clutters our lives? If you are not sure, here’s what we decided to do.

We want 2024 to be different; to be based overseas for more of the year, to travel in Europe and elsewhere and to have the income to live each day as we want. However to get the dreams out of our heads and into our lives we created a simple plan to enable us to view 2024 in its entirety.

Starting with an A4 calendar we blocked out when we needed to be in our retreat in Hungary and when we needed to be in the UK. We knew we wanted to travel in April so we booked a week’s break as part of our journey out. From that we worked out our departure date for driving and what we needed in terms of arranging a housesitter or lodger. Here's our first draft:-

In other words setting a plan and a deadline has created the urgency to get things done and everything else we need to do now needs to fit to that timeline. There’s no space for procrastination or getting bogged down; we’ve got 4 weeks to get it sorted!

And here’s the strange thing - I am not the world’s biggest lover of planning. My experience of working with people and tools such as MBTI shows me that many of us have a preference for either big picture or detail. In my case, by presenting the details in a big picture format I can clearly see the priorities yet there is enough detail to meet Kathy’s needs too.

Now we know what needs to be done there is little room for needless argument but perhaps even more importantly we are both energised and excited by the prospect of such a significant change in our lives! It’s like rekindling the fire that burned when we first decided to create our amazing retreat out of the ashes of the rundown smallholding we purchased back in 2018.

I hope this simple trick of bringing your dreams to life will help you in 2024 and beyond. If so, please feel free to share in the comments.

Here’s to a wonderful year!