The awesome thing about doing a yearly resource like Plan Your Year is that you get a built-in review process. Now on its third revision, Plan Your Year has become my favorite course we offer. It’s practical, deceptively large in scope, and can be completed in three hours or less. For being small in size, it packs a powerful punch.
One of the things I love about Plan Your Year is the way it builds on the principles introduced in our flagship training, The Focus Course. PYY helps you make sure those same principles find their way into your calendar.
Here are a few things that are better about Plan Your Year for the 2020 version…
Even More Helpful
With the release of a new version every twelve months, we get to iterate and refine an already great product.
As a team, we felt it was important to not just make updates for the sake of making changes. Ultimately, we want to make an even more helpful annual planning tool. Might I add, even more delightful.
What started as a process that Shawn and his wife Anna would do every year turned into a formalized workbook back in 2017 when we first launched Plan Your Year. The last two years, Joanna and I have gone through a review process to make Plan Your Year even better. Once again leading back to our hypothesis, “How can we make PYY even more helpful?”
The goal being to get the tool out of the way and let you think, dream, and plan the upcoming year in a way that correlates back to your core values and reconciles the stage of life you are in.
Design Update
There are some big design updates this year, including a splash of color here and there as well as more defined space to answer questions and prompts. Structure brings boundaries to creative thinking, which can quickly lead to clarity. This could be something as simple as defining the space in which to process a question.
Returning to our value of making things more helpful, we updated the design of a few more tools within the workbook.
- New monthly spreads
- New Area of Life Assessment Tool
- Updated Goal Setting Tool
- Updated Project / Event planner
New Videos
The growing videographer in me looks at past work and always sees room for improvement. Funnily enough, the original PYY video back in 2017 was a complete afterthought — a last minute addition in which I convinced Shawn to let me turn on the camera and film him walking through the workbook.
The two main areas of improvement I wanted to see were: (1) an increase in production quality and; (2) tightening up the content of the videos themselves.
The workbook is already self-explanatory, so for the videos I wanted to capture Shawn in his role as a coach explaining some of the things the workbook may not explicitly say — things that Shawn would say to you if you were in a room with him, going through the workbook together.
I am really happy with the improvements in the video quality. And, the videos are about half as long. Easy to watch, more concise, and more helpful overall. ☺️
New Prompts and Questions
The area that received the most attention from our team was the questions and prompts throughout the workbook. We reviewed each and every one and evaluated their place in the material.
- What thoughts, emotions, or memories is this question supposed to help recall?
- What value is this prompt pulling out?
- How does this exercise lead someone to greater clarity or self-awareness?
Each question is meant to be a springboard that reduces the effort of the jump we’re asking you to make. Whether that’s reflecting on the last twelve months or thinking about what things you value most, the process can be tiring. We did our best to limit these exercises to what would be most helpful.
The spirit of them is to help you access thinking and consideration easier. So if a question isn’t helping, just go on to the next and don’t think twice.
Prepare for a New Year
One of the reasons this is my favorite product is because it’s meant to result in change. A new year, a new season, and a fresh start with unlimited opportunity to make positive change in any area of life.
Plan Your Year helps you get the necessary clarity to make lasting change in the areas of life that truly matter. I hope you find it helpful in planning for 2020, and that you ultimately find success in aligning your vision and values with your time and energy.
The brand-new Plan Your Year workbook will be ready tomorrow — on Tuesday, Dec 10.
