Planning Should Be Pretty

Planning Should Be Pretty This is a guest post from Laura Simms of Create as Folk, my partner in creative-career-coaching crime. Love that shes tackling the time management piece that, oh, every creative Ive ever met struggles with. Huzzah for Laura! Imagine that youre a creative entrepreneur. Or trying to be. And imagine all the things youre supposed to be doing like blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, guest posting, SEO, and oh, doing the billable stuff like working with clients or fulfilling orders and creating products. It can be overwhelming. Can I get an Amen!? Things that can help generate income can also become distractions (ahem, social media), and figuring out whats a priority in your business can be confusing. Because there are so many opinionated voices telling you what you need to do! Right now! Or *insert painful consequence!* I spent some time in the run-around zone in my own business. Some new task or strategy would pop up on my radar and panic! I would spend the rest of the day/week/month (ouch) working to fix this problem I didnt know I had the day before. New information is great. Its how we grow. But I was running my biz in a highly reactionary way. Whos steering the ship? Why, whoever has the catchiest blog post today, of course. Not a good plan. So I started experimenting on my own business. And in working with clients. You know what I found? You can save yourself a lot of grief by: 1. making a you-shaped plan 2. sticking to it It sounds so simple I want to kick myself. But thats the straight dope. So I got real into dope. (Google, please dont haunt me because of that last sentence.) I became a dedicated planner. Now before you snooze, let me tell you how I think of planning: Planning is setting goals based on your values consciously creating the optimal conditions to achieve them. I believe that is a beautiful thing. And so I created an e-guide to help other creative entrepreneurs bring that beauty and focus to their business. Roadmap to Action contains 62 action-packed pages, all tried and true stuff that I use in my own business or share with clients. The structure is thereyou just have to put yourself into it. Because you know what else I learned? There is no one perfect system for everyone. You have to find what works for you. And because I dont like looking at janky ole planning stuff (I dont think you do either), I made it pretty. And included 13 beautiful and right-brain friendly planners. Because planning should be pretty. The invitation is open: learn more about Roadmap to Action and chart your course. Michelles two cents: I got a sneak peak of Roadmap to Action, and I thanked Moses that Laura didnt put out a list of planners like she wrote that she originally set out to do. The juicy questions she asks the reader to answer upfront lead to nothing but goodness, and an ease in using the (gorgeous! right-brain friendly!) planning tools that appear at the end of the book. Roadmap to Action isn’t just for yearly reflection/goal-setting â€" it’s for anyone who needs help prioritizing, dealing with overwhelm, and discovering their own effective time management system (which is every creative person I’ve ever met). Get Roadmap to Action before your head explodes. For reals. As a career coach for creatives, Laura Simms helps folks discover and cultivate the work meant just for them through career transition and small business coaching. She’s the creator of Roadmap to Action, and enjoys working with emerging and established creatives through one-on-one coaching. She vlogs weekly from her bird’s egg blue chair at createasfolk.com.