The holiday season is a time of celebration…and reflection…and planning for the new year. As you reflect back on the previous year, what would you say are your 4 most significant accomplishments of the year? Can you recall them rapidly? What is your plan to make 2011 your best year ever? In this time of relaxation and renewal, what if you could take a few minutes to learn a strategy that would make every quarter… The Perfect Quarter?

Running your business and your personal life on a quarterly cycle makes sense because 90 days is a short enough time period to create a highly-focused plan, while being a long enough time period to move significant projects and goals to the next level or even to completion. This 90-day approach allows plenty of time for planning without dominating your calendar with planning time.

The Way of Nature
Just as nature renews itself with each season, you will renew yourself each quarter on your way to building your perfect business and your perfect life.  Imagine living your life in a series of 90-day periods where you have plenty of time to grow your business, ample time for professional development, generous time devoted to planning with your team, and at least 1 – 2 weeks of real, quality time-off for vacation each quarter.  By following this 90-day cycle, you’ll live a life of both success and balance.

The Structure of Balance
Most people work too much with too little planning and structure, only to crash with exhaustion and frustration at the lack of balance in their lives and the feeling that they have accomplished little. Here’s how you can break the cycle starting right now. Understand that balance has STRUCTURE. Many people believe that to feel better, they need more unstructured time. But to have unstructured time, you must design a structure to create it. It is the paradox of balance. Too many of us are thinking about work when we are at home and thinking about home when we are at work. So let’s look as how to design the structure of both accomplishment and balance.

Think in Quarters:
Break 2011 into 4 quarters and think about each quarter as separate and distinct. Each calendar quarter contains 13 weeks. You’ll invest them as follows:

1. Vacation! Schedule one to two weeks of REAL VACATION each quarter. (In the beginning you may only take one week of vacation and as you build your momentum with this system you will find that you can progressively enjoy more and more time off.) Notice that you are starting by scheduling the time that is most likely to be delayed, deferred or ignored completely; Working continuously will burn you out, sap your energy, take over your identity and steal your Life. Working continuously will grind you up and deny you, your company, your team and your family of your best. Schedule at least one week of real vacation into your first quarter and stick to it no matter what comes up.

What do we mean by real vacation? We mean that you must vacate the”premises,” physically and mentally. No Smartphone’s, no email, no laptop, no work anything, no business reading… Just relax and FEEL what it’s like to LIVE life. Take it in... Absorb it… You deserve this... Imagine what it will feel like to live this stress free every day… as you master this system.

Connect with and recommit to your health, relationships, family, friends and your personal and spiritual goals. Be fully present on your weekends and vacation so that you are feeling renewed and have the energy to be fully present at work with your team and your customers. RIGHT NOW…schedule at least one week of vacation on your calendar for the first quarter. You can work out exactly what do to with that week later and you can move it within the quarter if you need to, but right now, put it on your calendar. How does that feel?

By scheduling your vacation first, you’ll have something very positive to look forward to each quarter and it will be your incentive and motivation to get everything else done on time so it does not interfere with your vacation and to ensure that you can truly relax on your vacation.  

2. Major Project Time: Block one week for a major project that will really move your career or your company forward. Don’t put it next to your vacation week. One will surely bleed into the other or you will be pulled into the day-to-day crises. Create a week where THE ONLY THING YOU DO is work on single significant project. You may think you can’t do this, but you can. If it is truly a significant project for your company, you can delegate or put off for just one week everything else.

If you need team members to help, get them scheduled far in advance you can all concentrate and bang this thing out. If you do this each quarter, you will have accomplished 4 Major Projects each year of your career, a significant accomplishment by anyone’s standards…and you’ll easily recall what they were when you are enjoying your year end egg nog or champagne.

If you are short on projects, as the author of Overpromise and Overdeliver, might I suggest that in the first quarter, you use your project time to identify your company’s Overpromise. In the second quarter you could align your Product TouchPoints, in the third quarter, you could align your Systems TouchPoints, and in the fourth quarter, you could align your Human TouchPoints, and you would have created an entirely different brand and customer experience in just one year! It is possible with a real focus!

3. Professional Development Next you’ll need to make sure your one week of professional development per quarter is scheduled on your calendar. In a global marketplace changing at a blistering pace, unemployment at an all time high and where Fortune 500 CEO’s average tenure is under 5 years, you cannot afford to take a quarter off when it comes to professional development.

Being in a constant learning posture is a hallmark of peak performers and you need to manage your professional growth to ensure that you are staying current in your area of subject matter expertise and with trends in your industry and field. Block the week now and then find a conference or training class or seminar or self study course that will move your career or business forward and then you can move your professional development week to the appropriate dates.

Be sure to also schedule a day into your professional development week to debrief with your boss, partners or peers and to build critical actions into your calendar as a result of your new learning.

You’ll soon find that you are also looking forward to your professional development time and that it will re-energize your quarter and give you ideas for your major project for next quarter. Your confidence will also increase as you accelerate your frequency of professional growth.

Reflection and Planning Time As Part of your week of professional development, you should also build in planning time to reflect on the previous quarter and analyze what went well and what needs to be changed or improved.

4. Real Work Time Just as you scheduled real vacation time, now you’ve got 10 weeks left in your quarter to SCHEDULE REAL WORK TIME. What are the critical tasks you must accomplish each day, week or month in this quarter? List them out and schedule them into time blocks in throughout your perfect quarter. Be sure to leave about 30-40% of your time unblocked for adjustments, the unplanned and the unexpected.

If you are fully present and you really focus, you can easily get done those things you scheduled in 60% of your 10 real work weeks. Most executives waste 20-40% of their day looking for lost or disorganized paperwork, reading unnecessary emails, chatting, doing activities that are fun, easy, personal or more interesting that their real work. It’s human nature. But if you can really focus just 60% of the time for 10 weeks, you’ll accomplish everything in your plan every quarter!

AND…you’ll have accomplished a major project, invested a week in professional development, and had a glorious week of real vacation with your family. Wouldn’t that be The Perfect Quarter? What if you could have 4 of those in 2011? What would your holidays look like, sound like and feel like after a year like that? You might just have The Perfect Year! Happy Holidays!

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Rick Barrera is a branding expert and customer service speaker, as well as the author of the bestselling book: Overpromise and Overdeliver: The Secrets of Unshakable Customer Loyalty.