The Benefits of Dividing Your Life into Seasons

With the year just starting, now is a great time to start thinking about planning out your year. One of the best ways to start when it comes to planning your year is to break it up into seasons. You can break your year up in many ways. My favourite, from years of trailing and tweaking, is to break it up into quarters.

I actually came across the concept of dividing my year up into seasons from Lewis Howes’ podcast a few years ago. At the time I had just burned out from trying to do too much and had just started working for myself as a way to gain some much-needed balance.

"The Earth’s weather pattern is divided up into seasons. This allows for life to flourish. If it’s good enough for the Earth, it’s good enough for me."

The idea of breaking your year up into quarters works well because it replicates much of the populated world’s natural weather cycle of four seasons — Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring. Essentially, it gives you four 12-week blocks, plus an extra four weeks at the end.

I trialled this system in my business and it worked so well that I incorporated it into every aspect of my life — when I work, when I take a break, when I take holidays, when I train, even how I eat — and it’s all underpinned by our family and how we live.

The Benefits of Dividing Your Life into Seasons

• It keeps you motivated
  If you were to just put your head down and go hell-for-leather, at some stage in the not-too-distant future, you will feel burnt out and lacking motivation. Having regular pit stops allows you to recharge mentally, emotionally and physically.
• It helps to keep you on track
  Imagine swimming in the open ocean. If you don’t look up from time-to-time, you could easily swim off course and end up kilometres from your desired destination. Treading water for a short time helps you not only to recover, but check in on your progress and direction.
• It allows you to plan ahead — maximising opportunities and minimising obstacles
  Planning your year out at the beginning of the year (or even the end of the year before) helps you to recognise times in the year that can naturally lend themselves to opportunities or obstacles. Breaking this down further into quarters further enhances these times. Each quarter can even have a theme.
• Ten weeks is an ideal timeframe for high-performance
  Much of the goal setting research shows that 70-90 days is an ideal timeframe for goal attainment. It also provides enough time to see noticeable change and maintain motivation (if done right).
• Two weeks is an ideal timeframe to rest, recover and rejuvenate
  I’ve played around for years with breaks that last from one week to six. In all that time, I’ve discovered that two weeks is the ideal timeframe to allow your mind and body to recover, particularly when those breaks are consistently every three months.
• Your year can be periodised, just as an elite athlete’s annual program would be
  An elite athlete’s training program is broken up into macro, meso and micro cycles to ensure they achieve maximum performance and peak at the right time. The year is your macro cycle, the 10-week block with 2-week break is your meso cycle and the days and individual weeks are your micro cycles.
• It replicates the weather cycle for much of the populated world — Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring
  The Earth’s weather pattern is divided up into seasons. This allows for life to flourish. If it’s good enough for the Earth, it’s good enough for me.

Dividing your year up into seasons, just like the Earth’s, allows you to increase your motivation and keep you on track to perform at a higher standard in all areas of your life.

How will you divide your year up?

[Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash]