3 Steps to Planning Your Year in Evernote
Nov 25 2024 | Issue 19 | Link to this issue | Subscribe
Hi Reader –
I just got back from a business retreat, where I worked on planning out each area of my life and business for 2025. And (no surprise here), I rely on Evernote to support my planning process.
Today, I’ll walk you through what that looks like for me.
A peek inside my 2025 planning process with Evernote
During a 2 day retreat, my mastermind coach led me and 4 other business owners through a planning process based on the OGSM Framework. OGSM is a strategic planning tool that helps organizations, teams, and individuals translate their goals into actions. OGSM stands for objectives, goals, strategies, and metrics.
Step 1: Reflect
Before diving into the framework, we did a reflection journaling exercise. As you might expect, I typed the prompts and my reflections in Evernote.
I used Evernote’s header styles to create collapsible sections for each prompt:
🔥 Tip: If pen and paper journaling works better for you, use the camera built into Evernote to save your journaling to Evernote. Then use AI Transcribe to extract your handwriting into typewritten text you can edit and work with in the next steps in your planning process. It’s shocking how good a job it does reading your handwriting (yes, even your handwriting!).
Step 2: OGSM Development
Going through the OGMS framework was an iterative process that evolved over the course of two days.
As I went through additional journaling and sharing exercises with the group, I would create new notes and refine those I had.
I created an Evernote notebook to collect and segregate the notes I was taking during the process. I called it Business Planning 2025.
I again relied on Evernote as my brainstorming tool. I used a new note to type out my thoughts, refined my ideas, and organize my typing.
We started with objectives. Then moved into goals and strategies. And, as metrics emerge to support the objectives, goals and strategies, they get added to the document (this is an area I continue to work on).
This note – the final version of 2 days of effort – shows how I use several Evernote features to support my planning process.
Let’s go through them:
1: Insert (Paste) an Image
I inserted a screenshot image of the OGSM process. This acted as a point of reference to remind me of the definitions of each part of the process.
2: Note Links
I want to be able to easily access notes related to the exercise of creating my strategic plan. So, I added note links to related information I have in my account at the top of the page.
This provides one click access to the related notes, regardless of where they are located in my account. This means I didn’t have to actually move the notes into the same project notebook – I’ve created an organization for this project simply by inserting a note link to related information.
3: Backlinks
When you add note links, Evernote automatically creates a backlink in the destination note. In this case, I added a link to this Stillwater Mastermind: OGSM Framework – 2025 note to two other notes in my account. I can now navigate to them via the Backlinks menu that's automatically generated in this note.
4: Collapsible Sections
Because they have a hierarchical relationship, I make heavy use of Evernote’s collapsible sections to organize and quickly jump around my OGSM plan.
I assigned different header options (H1, H2, and H3) to objectives (H1), goals (H2) and strategies (H3) which enabled the collapsible sections feature. By doing so, I was able to collapse and expand the sections I was working on to create better focus as I thought through different areas of my plan.
In addition, using header styles set me up for the 5th Evernote feature…
5: Table of Contents
I inserted a Table of Contents (using the slash "/" command menu) which creates a high level overview of my OGSM framework and allows me to jump to each area with a click. In addition, if I changed the title of any of my goals (something I often did as I refined my goals), the TOC automatically updated to reflect the new goal I had set.
6: Project Notebook
I created a notebook to collect the notes I made for this project and filed this note – along with others I created along the way.
I’m a big advocate of creating notebooks for your projects. Notebooks act as great containers for quickly grouping and accessing related project notes.
Your notebooks don’t have to contain a large volume of notes to be effective. For example, in this case, I only have 5 notes there (so far). That's just fine. Given the importance of this project – which is my guiding roadmap for my 2025 business and life plans – I’m happy to have a clear container to access these important notes that I’ll be often referencing as I implement my plan.
Step 3: Plan My Action
Now that I’m clear on my plan for 2025, the next step is to plan my implementation. I start with the big picture and then narrow my focus to create some order.
First up is my wall calendar. I’m highly visual, so I like to see everything laid out in front of me for the year.
My favorite tool for this is the NeuYear dry erase wall calendar. I buy it every year. I like the large format, minimalist presentation, and flexibility that the dry-erase offers. It makes it easy to move projects around and see the impact of holidays and vacation on my business planning.
Once I have a good idea of what months I’ll work on specific strategies, I move my planning process into Evernote.
I use Evernote’s monthly calendar template to time block strategic implementation in digital form. Typically I do this a quarter at a time as adapt each quarter's plan to the current realities of life and adjust based upon the metric results I’m seeing from the OSGM framework I put in place.
Once I have my quarterly plan in Evernote, I break it down into specific time blocks in Google Calendar to manage my daily schedule. Thanks to Evernote's calendar integration, I view my Google Calendar directly in Evernote and can create new calendar events without leaving the app. This integration also works with Outlook, and iCal integration is currently in development.
🧠 Academy Members: Get up to speed on exactly how to work with your calendar in Evernote with the Evernote Home Widgets and Masterclass: Evernote Calendar trainings.
In conjunction with my calendar plans, my Evernote based GTD practice dictates my daily tasks, todos and projects plans.
This is how Evernote serves as my central dashboard for executing the goals I set during this 2025 strategic planning session. Its powerful features make planning and organizing next year's objectives remarkably straightforward.
Because everything lives in Evernote, I can access my plans from any device, whether I'm at my computer or on my phone. Plus, when it's time to plan for 2026, I'll have a complete record of this year's goals and progress to reflect upon—making next year's planning process even more effective.
Happy planning!
Stacey
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