What do you usually do at the beginning of each month?
Do you usually prepare for each new month, or do you tend to take it as it comes hoping for the best?
I believe that the most effective way to make the most of a new month is to have a plan in place.
Not just any old plan but a plan that is specifically tailored to that month and all you hope to achieve.
I have shared below some ideas on key things you can do at the beginning of each month to ensure it is productive and meaningful.
Eight Ideas for a Super Productive Month
Here are eight things you can do at the beginning of every month to improve your productivity and achieve your goals.
1. Make a List of your Monthly Goals.
The central part of a monthly plan is in articulating your monthly goals. This is a list of the key projects or tasks that need to be completed within that month. To make this process smart and achievable, it is often advised that we stick to no more than 5 big goals. The planner I use breaks this down to two personal projects and two work projects.
Remember to break these goals into smaller, doable chunks. This increases the possibility of working on and completing your goals.
If you are not sure of how to select or choose your main goals, here are a few questions you can ask:
- What do I hope to achieve this year?
- What can I do this month to help me get closer to my year end goals?
- What resources or information do I need?
- Are these things I can access and focus on this month?
2. Review how well you did in the previous month.
There is often a tendency to dive head-first into the new month without taking stock of all that happened in the previous month.
However, I believe ignoring the previous month would be a missed opportunity to learn, revise, and reinforce. I recently learned a three-step review process: Start-Stop-Continue.
Start: Write out the list of things you need to start doing, this could be habits, work style or some other idea that can improve your productivity and output.
Stop: stop doing things that are not working, or things that have a negative impact on your productivity or ability to achieve your goals. An easy one may be social media use, the way you check your emails or your eating habits.
Continue: This is my favourite of the three. Here you consider the things that worked in the previous month and find ways to replicate these. For instance, at the beginning of last month, I decided to have a set schedule for publishing my blog posts, this has worked so well that I intend to continue doing it going forward.
3. Create Your Gratitude List
Write out the things you are grateful for from the last month:
“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Melody Beattie
Nothing builds positivity and growth like gratitude.
I believe that expressing our gratitude for things that occurred in the previous month improves our optimism and excitement about the new month.
To make this work, we need to identify and note down all the things we are grateful for. Remember that nothing is too small. It may be that you woke up earlier than usual, or even that you were able to cook healthier meals than you did in previous months.
The important thing is that you mine your memory for all the things that occurred during the month.
I say this for two reasons: the process of identifying the things we are grateful for often reminds us of what went well (including the challenges we overcame), which we may have forgotten.
Secondly, expressing our gratitude puts us in a better frame of mind, we are more likely to be humble and kinder to ourselves.
Keeping a daily journal has helped me with this process. I usually go through my entry for the month and note down the things I am particularly grateful for.
4. Create a Budget for the New month.
I usually create my budget for the new month in the current month.
This gives me time to consider the things I would need in the new month and how much I would be willing to spend in each category.
As I mentioned in this post, your budget is merely a snapshot of your income and expenses for a given time period. It’s a way to track how much you have coming in and going out. I can honestly say that since I restarted tracking my expenses, I have been able to spend way less and save some money.
This is also a good time to automate your savings, schedule your bills, and highlight any side hustle opportunities you wish to explore.
5. Create a Meal Plan and Prepare a Grocery List.
Creating a meal plan is one of the best ways to prepare for a new month. For one thing, it takes away the time, energy (and even frustration) that comes with deciding what to eat. More importantly, it’s a means to reduce our food bill and our tendency to waste food.
In this post, I shared some of the benefits of having a meal plan, including the potential to reduce your food budget by as much as 30%.
Once you have your meal plan, you can then create a grocery list based on the things on your plan. This way, you don’t succumb to impulse buys or random purchases, but have a list to guide your shopping.
Another great tip is to shop weekly rather than monthly. This is especially handy if you buy a lot of fresh food (which goes bad quickly) or you have limited space to store all the things you buy.
You may worry that meal planning takes away the spontaneity from eating and that you will be bored with eating the same things, but that’s not necessarily true. I usually leave my weekends free since I would have more time to forage or may wish to eat out. Here are some meal plan ideas.
6. Print out Your Monthly Habit Tracker for the new month.
In an earlier post, I mentioned how having a personal growth checklist improved my life. The process of having a set number of things I do every day created much needed consistency, and provided a great foundation for all the other things I could accomplish each day.
More so, having a monthly checklist also has a psychological impact. They give you a sense that you have achieved something important each day. You can get your copy here.
7. Fill Your Weekly Planner for the New Month.
In addition to zeroing in on your goals for the month, you can also fill out your to-do list for the first week of the new month.
This pre-emptive measure ensures that you start the month with a clear guide of what you need to do. As the saying goes, you get to ‘hit the ground running’.
Even if you don’t have a clear idea of your full itinerary for that month, you can still note down things you are aware of, such as the days you wish to work on the main goals for the month.
8. Declutter and Organise Your Workspace
A new month is a great time to clear out your desk and remove checklists and notes from the previous month.
“Clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions.”
Barbara Hemphill
Another important part of getting ready for a new month is to ensure that the things you no longer need from previous months have been cleared away. This contextualises the ‘new slate’ reference I mentioned in the introduction.
You cannot really call it a new slate if you’re still nose deep in clutter and information from the previous period. This of course does not apply to projects that cut across different months.
I don’t know about you but clearing out my desk feels like I have more breathing room to work and be creative. It almost like the act of decluttering and putting things in the right place also makes room in my mind. Perhaps, you can relate to this.
“…out of calmness comes clarity.”
Trevor Carss
I love the above quote as it reminds me of what is possible when our environment is in order.
Final Thoughts
There you have it, eight things you can at the beginning of a new month to ensure that you make the most of you time and achieve your goals.
I would like to reiterate that creating a monthly plan is the first and integral step to having a productive month. However, you will still need to act.
For instance, creating a budget you don’t follow, or a meal plan you don’t implement would be a waste of the time and effort, and may also leave you susceptible to the bad habits and practices you were trying to overcome.
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