Why is Monthly Planning & Reflection So Hard?

Monthly planning and reflection can be effortless, and immensely powerful.

When it comes to planning and reflection, the month is often the most daunting, and the least sexy. Four-plus weeks seems too far to go backward to find anything useful, and it often feels hard to predict what our habits and projects will look like one month into the future.

There’s a bigger danger at play when prospecting and retrospecting (we’ll get into these later): living too much in the past or the future can prevent us from living in the present. Let’s take a minimalist approach to monthly planning & reflection (p&r), and for those of you interested in getting started (it is the first of the month after all), I have a Minimalist Monthly Planner Notion template, exclusively for subscribers.

Why Reflect Monthly?

It’s a tough sell. Daily reflection allows us to celebrate our wins and acknowledge our challenges, as a pencils-down moment. Weekly reflection feels actionable because you can take unfinished or delayed actions/projects and prioritize them going into the following week.

We rarely set personal or professional goals on a monthly cadence. One fact I find personally frustrating: months never align with starts or ends of weeks!