For years, I collected planning systems the way some people collect diets.
A new planner. A new framework. A new promise that this one would finally make my ideas hold still long enough to become a plan.
None of them did. Not because the systems were bad. Because they were solving the wrong problem.
I have never struggled for ideas. I have too many, and I want to execute all of them immediately. What I hadn’t learned — what nobody had actually taught me — was future-focused planning. Not “what excites me,” but: What can I do today? What’s reasonable? What are the other things in my world already asking of me, before I add one more thing to the pile?
I took my plans to coaches. To mentors. Smart, generous people who got genuinely excited about the big, audacious goals I brought them. And every one of them missed the same thing.
Not one of them asked me, “Is this actually achievable for you, given everything else you’re carrying right now?”
That question mattered more than any framework. And nobody was asking it.
One of the people I’m most grateful to on this path is Janine Garner (https://janinegarner.com.au/). Janine gave me a workbook-style planner years ago, and something about the format stuck — the physical act of writing it down, in one place, rather than letting it live as noise in my head. I didn’t stay with her exact process. I iterated on it, pulled it apart, rebuilt it around my own life, tested it against quarter after quarter of my own business. But it’s fair to say every planning tool I’ve built since starts there.
What I ended up with is Your Plan. And the part of it that actually changed things for me isn’t a goal-setting exercise. It’s a sorting question.
When an idea shows up — and they show up constantly, loud and urgent and convincing — I ask myself one thing: is this a today issue? Is it a three-months issue? Is it a twelve-months issue? Or does it belong in the parking lot?
That’s it. That’s the whole discipline. Not “should I do this,” but “when, if ever, does this actually belong.”
It sounds almost too simple to be the thing that finally worked. But most of what makes a plan fail isn’t a bad idea in it. It’s every idea trying to happen at once, with no permission structure for deciding what waits.
This is also, not coincidentally, what the people who come through my quarterly planning sessions tell me changed for them. Not “thank you for the big vision.” Almost always some version of: thank you so much for helping me make good decisions without overwhelming myself.
That’s the whole offer, really. Not more ambition. A way to hold the ambition you already have against the life you’re already living, without either one having to lose.
I run these sessions in small groups. I like keeping it small — six feels right, though I’ll be honest, I haven’t filled all six seats for this round yet, and I’m still working out whether ten would be something I could hold well or something that would cost me more than it gives back. That’s the same question I ask everyone else to ask about their own ideas, applied to my own business. I’d rather do six people well, a few times over, than do ten and find out the hard way I couldn’t.
If any part of this sounds like your own pile of half-started plans and mentors who only ever asked you to dream bigger, this is the room I built instead.
Your Plan — Quarterly Review Workshop
Thursday, 24 September 2026, 10am-1pm Sydney time
Three hours. $79.00 AUD.