Quarter as a Mini Year
Reset annual ambitions every quarter around three priorities
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 98%
Carlson plans each quarter as if it were a miniature year. The annual plan supplies direction, but the quarterly reset restores the energy and clarity that often fade after January. Before a new quarter, she revisits what she wants to achieve in the year, decides what the next three months can advance, and narrows focus to three priorities. Those priorities span more than business; she includes health, wellbeing, and family so personal aims are not crowded out by commercial planning. Requests and commitments beyond the quarter can still be recorded, but they do not replace the immediate focus. The mechanism is a recurring translation from broad annual ambition to bounded quarterly execution, followed by another deliberate reset rather than an eleven-month drift.
Origin
Extracted from The Foundr Podcast
Core principles
- 01Renew commitment before annual plans drift
- 02Translate yearly aims into one quarter
- 03Limit attention to three priorities
- 04Plan business, wellbeing, and family together
How to run it
- 1
Reopen the year
Review the outcomes you wanted for the full year and note what has changed. Treat the review as a reset rather than a judgement on imperfect progress.
Pro tip Separate goals that still matter from goals retained only through inertia.
- 2
Translate into one quarter
Ask what meaningful portion of each annual ambition belongs in the next three months. Record later commitments without letting them dominate current planning.
Pro tip Define an observable quarter-end result for each candidate priority.
Watch out Do not treat the quarter as room for the entire annual plan.
- 3
Choose the top three
Select three priorities across the areas that matter, including business and personal life. Use the limit to force trade-offs.
Pro tip If a fourth priority appears, decide which of the original three it replaces.
Watch out A list of ten priorities is not focused planning.
- 4
Start before the quarter starts
Break the priorities into initial actions and place them into your calendar or task system. Repeat the full reset before the next quarter.
Pro tip Schedule the next quarterly review now.
In the wild
In March, Carlson's coaching program planned the quarter beginning April 1. She described looking back at the year's aims, breaking them into the next quarter, and focusing on three priorities covering business, health and wellbeing, and family.
→ Annual intentions become a limited set of near-term commitments before the new quarter begins.
Common mistakes
Planning only in January
Carlson says enthusiasm fades as life and business intervene. Without a reset, unfinished annual goals can remain unnoticed until late in the year.
Letting business crowd out life
She deliberately includes health, wellbeing, and family because personal priorities are otherwise easy to defer.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for people who set annual goals but need regular resets and tighter near-term focus.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for fast-changing situations where even a quarterly commitment would be too rigid.
From the transcript
“every quarter we plan the quarter as if it's a mini year”
“I just focus on the quarter.”
“I focus only on my top three”
From the episode
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Kristina Karlsson