My Theme for 2012

In an earlier blog post we talked about the principles of planning your year around a theme.

Let me share some of the nuances of theme planning by telling you about my theme for 2012.

My Theme for the Year is…

A drum roll please… My theme for 2012 is ‘Retirement’.

No, I’m not turning 65. No, I’m not going to sit on a beach for the rest of my life. And, no, I’m not going to stop working at the end of 2012.

Inside the theme of ‘retirement’, my specific goal is to earn $10,000 a month from my online activities. When I achieve this, it means I can then run my business from anywhere on the planet I can get an internet connection. Plus, if a client approaches me for work I can choose to do the work, or not.

For me this is the equivalent of retirement. It means I can work on what I what, when I want and where ever I want. It’s my version of Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week.

What My Year Will Look Like

Let’s drill down a little deeper… What will this look like?

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. It will be a combination of publishing ebooks, creating products, running paid webinars and offering online courses. It may also include a membership site so you can access everything I produce plus have direct access to me and some brain-time.

Can you hear how wide-open this type of planning is? Can you hear there is multiple ways to achieve this goal? Can you hear the presumption that I don’t really know in advance what will work?

That’s the whole point of a planning inside a theme or broad direction.

Loose and Tight Planning

And, this is not about being casual or loose in your planning. You want BOTH tight and loose. So, whilst the overall year is loose, the next 90 days are tight. I know what I’m working on for 90 days and I’m not sure what follows that.

The Details

Here’s how my year looks… Each year is broken down into four 13 week blocks. I then create a goal for the first block – equivalent to 90 days.

For me in 2012:

• My theme is about producing ‘things’ that will earn me online income.
• Inside the first 90 days of the year, my goal is to write my book on Ideas Marketing. It’ll be a summary of the workshops and webinars I ran in 2011.
• Once I complete this project or when the block is complete I sit down and plan what’s next. It could be to write another book or turn this book into a seminar or online course. We’ll make that decision when the time arrives.