A LOT with Audra

Ep13
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Audra Dinell: [00:00:00] Hey there. Welcome to a lot with Audra. I am so glad to be with you today, and I'm especially excited because today is a fresh start. Now, technically any day is a fresh start, but if you're listening to this episode on the day it comes out, this is the second quarter of 2025, and it might be my A DHD brain.

But I love fresh starts. I am a person who looks forward to the new year. I am a person who uses every [00:01:00] birthday as a new beginning. Fresh starts are something that give me a sense of hope and motivate me. And there's science behind this too. The fresh start effect is a phrase coined by researchers, and it's talking exactly about what I just shared, that people are, are more likely to initiate positive changes in behavior around significant dates or new time periods, hence.

Where New Year's resolutions probably came from, et cetera. But if you dig a little bit deeper into this concept, psychology actually supports it. Psychologists use this term called temporal landmarks, and that describes events or time points such as our birthday. A Monday, a new school year, a beginning of a new month, that psychologically separate our present and future self from our past self.

So these landmarks can help us feel less [00:02:00] burdened by failures or setbacks in our recent past because we perceive that the beginning of a new phase or a new cycle is an opportunity for a fresh start. So I love when I have. This thing in my brain or this habit, and then I do some research and find, oh, science psychology actually supports this.

I mean, of course there's a caveat. Let me share with you. The fresh start effect can fade if you don't have a realistic plan. If you rely solely on a Monday for motivation, right? But building in more frequent, fresh starts, whatever that looks like for you, like a weekly check-in or an end of the week wrap up.

Can help us sustain motivation? So real talk. How is your year going? I tend to be a person who rolls into the new year with a lot of hope, and if you're like me, that can keep you rolling for a [00:03:00] while. And then the first challenge comes right? And I find that these fresh starts that we create for ourselves are so important, especially when dealing with the obstacles that will inevitably come.

Right, so I wanted to do an episode today about quarter two. We are in quarter two, I think that is week 14 of the year. 52 weeks in a year, and we're in week 14. I love framing this up for myself because again, it just gives me hope to keep on with. The good things I have rolling and also to overcome the challenges.

Challenges that I have in my life. Perhaps see them as opportunities so that's what this episode is gonna be all about. I'm gonna walk you through how I plan quarter two, and I would be grateful if you would stay along with me, would love to hear [00:04:00] your thoughts after the episode. Of course we'll post on social media, so I'd love to hear what resonated with you.

What do you do, get, you know, let's share ideas. Okay, so. Quarter two. The first thing I did was really the lowest hanging fruit, and that is I met with my team in early March. So typically my team sets out a plan for the year. We talk about some high level big rocks, and then we try and break those down into what those would actually look like, executing the vision.

But we don't get too deep because we really save the deeper work for each quarter of the year. So. We had this annual plan set out in early March. Before spring break, my team jumped on a call and we did Q2 planning. And I have to laugh because you're going to be meeting my team very soon. I'm so excited to introduce 'em to you on the podcast.

And I make this joke that I totally gaslighted them about planning quarter two [00:05:00] because we did this so early in March because of spring break that I completely forgot about it. And after spring break I was like, Hey, all, we have to set a time to go over quarter two, and my team just gave me the stare and they were like, wow, that just seems really fast.

I feel like we just did this and then. Kendra, my COO was like, we did just do this, hence why she's the operations person. And she reminded us, yes, we looked at our annual plan and yes, we reviewed what we had worked on and accomplished and worked towards in quarter one. And yes, we had mapped out priorities for quarter two.

In fact, we had talked about them in some detail. So I forgot to do one step and that is print off my big. Yearly rocks and what we're focusing on this quarter. So that's a sheet that I print off after our team meetings, and I just post it right above my desk so that I can make sure the things that I'm working on are actually connected to the vision we [00:06:00] have for the business this year.

So I just have to laugh because even though the first thing I did to plan quarter two was with my team, I totally forgot about it because I didn't. Do the very last step, which is to print it out and put it right in front of my face. And now you can see why that is so important. So the second thing that I do, after I've met with my team, we've taken our big rocks, distilled them into what we're working on this quarter.

And what that's actually gonna look like is, I'm gonna do a personal quarter two. Plan that is gonna start with my Q1 reflection. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go back to the very beginning of the year. I am going to look at my word of the year and sort of just like gut check how that is feeling for me, how my year is going using that filter.

So that's a [00:07:00] process. That's just gonna be really some thinking. It's not gonna be anything formal, it's just really reflecting. Okay. My second thing I'm gonna do is go back to that vision. The vision I cast for myself. That's a little bit further out and I'm just gonna get reoriented to it. Is there anything that I want to change?

Is there anything new that has come up? Is there anything that I wanna remove from that vision? And so for me, that vision is in a. Google Doc, so I'll just go revisit that Google Doc. It's also in a journal that I use, so I'll go to either one of those places and I'll just review my vision. Just get a refresh on, okay.

Yes, I'm reconnected. This feels good. I. And then what I'll do is I'll go to my full focus planner, which I've mentioned several times I use, and I'll look at the annual goals I set for myself. So if you haven't listened to the very first episode where I did a review of how I plan out my year, I'd love to link that in the show notes [00:08:00] for you in case you wanna go back and listen to that.

Part of that process is taking this big vision I have and the dreams I have for myself and distilling that out into 10 goals. Will I go for all 10 goals in this year? Not like 100% necessarily, but I will write them down and keep them at the front of my mind. For me, I keep them at the front of my planner, and some of the goals are like achievement goals.

Some of the goals are like, you know. Have this much money in your cash cushion or, buy another home or you know, just like actionable items that you can check off your list and you're like, okay, I've accomplished that. That's done. But a lot of the goals will be habit goals. So for me, as I'm reviewing my annual goals, I see there are some that I've.

Really built a beautiful cadence around in this first quarter. A couple of them I'd be happy to share with you are read for 25 minutes a [00:09:00] day. I mentioned before that I've always tried to read at least two books a month, and I rarely succeeded at that effort. So this year I decided to change my mindset and decide to read 25 minutes a day every day.

I did this because one of my favorite authors, Gretchen Rubin, who wrote The Happiness Project in many other books. Posted a challenge on Instagram. The 25 in 25 read 25 minutes a day in 2025, and it's really been working for me, just that little reframe. In fact, I have read 25 minutes a day at least, and I have read already nine books for the year.

So I'm already really above and beyond the goal that I had always previously set for myself. Because I just changed it. Instead of an accomplishment goal, I realized, oh, this is actually a habit. This is something that brings joy to my life, something that I want to do every day. And so I switched that from an achievement goal to a habit goal.

A couple things relationship wise in my habits as I'm reviewing them, not habits, my goals as I'm reviewing them, [00:10:00] although they are habit goals are. Goals I set around parenting and goals I set around marriage. So one thing that has been really fun in my life this year is that my husband and I have decided to commit to weekly dates.

Sometimes these are super fun, like a double date out with friends for dinner or a concert. Sometimes they are simply a walk to the coffee shop while our kids are occupied on a Sunday, right? But either way. It has felt really good to do that this year. So that's something that's going really well. Parenting as well.

I mentioned my three, sort of goals I had for myself as a parent this year, working to stay regulated, working to train my sweet kids up to be productive, successful, thriving adults. And then 10 minutes of connection time with them each, so. As I review my goals as I'm reviewing quarter one, I see, those are some really good wins.

And then I also look at some of my goals [00:11:00] and I see, ooh, we're not quite hitting the mark there. I wanted to save more than I have already. Thought we would be a little bit further along, potentially in our real estate investing, goal that we have for the year. So I like to just get really real with myself as a start, when I'm planning the next quarter, and then I move on from there.

So for me, I. What I'll do first is I will pull out a fresh full focus planner. So the planners I use are quarterly. I really like those again for that fresh start effect. And you can keep all of your yearly work in the planner. You just refill it out three more times in the year. But what I like about this is it just gives you a chance to tweak.

It gives you a built in time to reflect and it just feels like a fresh start. I will fill out my full focus planner I'll, what I'll do is look at, okay, where are we on the 10 goals I have for the year? Which ones do I actually wanna focus on this quarter? And then when I figure those out, I [00:12:00] am gonna drill down on those and figure out the actual plan and the how and the habits around those.

And then I'm gonna map out for this quarter, what does my ideal week look like? And that's where I'm gonna start. So speaking of habits for this quarter, this quarter is particularly special to me because I am turning 39 next month and it just feels like such a gift just this year. Before I enter a brand new decade, a decade that I'm so excited about, I don't know about you, but I've always looked forward to my forties.

I'll attribute this to a few different things. One, I had a manager. In high school when I was a lifeguard, who I assumed was in his forties, and he just had this great looking little life from the outside and I just thought, oh my gosh, that just looks like a really fun decade. And then my grandma, one [00:13:00] of my dearest friends.

Has always told me her forties were one of her favorite decades. So I've been looking forward to this decade coming up for years. Okay, so I have a year before I turn 40, and so what I'm gonna do is create a project around these four quarters I have left until I turned 40. I've been thinking about this for a while, ~and.~

~There's a couple of ideas that I have. ~Once I have them solidified, I'll share, but I'm sharing this now because this is part of that vision work. Once I've reviewed the first quarter to see where I am, and then I've looked at the second quarter ahead to decide, you know, what's my world like? What from my vision am I gonna work on?

I'll really. Pull back to the why behind that vision, and for me, it's so nice to just look at this as an. A fresh start of I'm gonna take this next year of my life and work on X, Y, [00:14:00] z, you know, so that hopefully life looks like this at 40. There's a lot of reflection that might happen in this project that I'm thinking too.

I think, that's one thing that is really common when you're getting ready to enter a new decade, whether it be, the 2020s or, your. Actual new decade of life. I think reflection is just a natural part of that process, so I always make sure I'm reconnecting my goals back to my vision.

Okay. And then the one new thing I'm gonna add in this quarter is I got a big ass calendar at the end of last year and it's actually called the Big Ass Calendar. Jesse Itzler, who is Sarah Blakely's husband, and I'm sure has lots of credentials on his own. He does, he's a big deal entrepreneur. But I know him because I fan girl over Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, and she is married to him.

So I've looked at this calendar for. A few years before I jumped in and now I have it on my wall and I just like a good big [00:15:00] visual. And recently I have seen how some people are using their calendars differently, so I'm gonna make mine a little bit more. Visual. I'm going to block off some weekends and just make my visual quarter two on that big ass calendar on my wall look like, spend some time on how it actually looks.

Just as an additional reminder for me, I find that my brain really loves visual reminders. Just like that sheet I have up on my wall for my. Plan for my business for the year. I'm gonna turn my calendar into a bigger version of that for work and home. One thing I will say about the big ass calendar, it introduced me and my husband to a concept called the misogi, I think is how you produce or pronounce it.

And this is basically picking your one big thing you're gonna do this year. If you've always wanted to write a book, you're gonna write the book. If you've always wanted to run a marathon, you're gonna run a marathon. If you've always wanted [00:16:00] to travel to Europe, you're gonna travel to Europe. So for me, my Miss Sogi this year was to start this podcast.

It had been brewing inside of me for years and years, and so on my calendar this year, I write Every Monday I plan to record a new podcast. Now. With my world. It doesn't always happen on Monday, but I have consistently recorded a podcast a week for the first quarter of the year. So I'm gonna look back at that, misogi, and be like, heck yeah, I did that for quarter one.

Let's keep up the momentum for quarter two and how can we add to it? Okay, so that brings me to the last thing I'm gonna do for quarter two planning, and that is to have a quarterly meeting with my husband. And so what we'll do is on a Sunday we will sit down and we will talk about. The first quarter, just pretty loosely.

We'll bring up our goals. We'll bring up both of our missa. We both have one this year, [00:17:00] one, big thing that we wanted to do to kind of check off our list. And we'll make a plan for the coming year.

This will always mean looking at our budget, looking at our calendar, and really just kind of talking about what we want for this quarter. Life can get so full, especially if you are a parent with just kid life and activities my husband works for a business and I own a business, and life can just get so full and you can just get so caught up in the day to day.

So I find that at least quarterly, having this meeting and just talking about, okay, this is what has happened in the last quarter. What do we want for the next quarter of the year? Let's. Talk about that in reflection of these big goals we've set for the year, but also just like, how was the pace that we're running, how does it feel?

That's just so, so important. I. So that's it. Those are the three things I'm doing to plan for quarter two of 2025. [00:18:00] I, again, would be so curious to hear if you have tips and tricks and thoughts or what works for you. I have a process that I've used for years, but I always add in something, new or make a little adjustment, how I'm making time for this.

You know, my team and I set our meeting on the calendar. Probably at the beginning of the year, I think we typically set our quarterly calendar meetings in, and if not at the beginning of the year, we'll, you know, make sure to add that in Miscellaneously, you know, in every quarter. And then personally.

I have a really full last week of March, and then my family is off and they're going camping, and so I am blocking off that weekend to turn over my spring wardrobe, which we talked about in the last episode. If you listen to it. And plan for a quarter two. And it's just gonna be what I hope is just this [00:19:00] beautiful weekend.

I love giving myself space and alone time to just dive into this. And then when my husband comes back on Sunday, that's when we'll have our quarterly meeting. Our quarterly meeting will probably take, you know. Maybe an hour, maybe 90 minutes. It doesn't take long. Sometimes we do something fun like go out and grab coffee.

We might actually do that this week. Sometimes we just do it in our kitchen because that's kind of where our life is that week. So I hope something that you heard today was helpful. Again, I just wanna reiterate, reiterate, all of these ideas are mine. I, just love sharing things like this with the world.

I love listening to others' processes. So I hope you found one thing that you think is interesting or you might wanna try again, would love to hear your thoughts. So when we post this on social, we'd love to hear your comments, suggestions. What do you do to plan for a new quarter? Are you a person who thinks in quarters like I am or are you a person who is more weekly, more monthly, more yearly?

Thank you for being here, and I [00:20:00] cannot wait to talk to you next week.