Planning your year may seem like an enormous task. It may also feel like you are trying to predict the future when we all know that many unexpected events and plans can get in the way of good plans.

Unknowns in life do exist, however, there are also significant benefits to making goals and plans to achieve those goals. Additionally, the process of planning can help improve your productivity as a Reiki practitioner and other areas of your life.

Planning your year provides a framework for what you want to achieve in your professional and personal life. When you make plans, you can identify the actionable steps that it takes to achieve your goals.

For example, you may have an overall goal to find more clients for your Reiki practice. This is a broad goal that can be broken down into defined tasks such as:

• April – create a referral network
• May – create an email list for clients
• June – advertise on Google

Planning provides the space to make a consistent commitment to dedicate time to tasks that help build your Reiki practice. Through the planning process, we can develop a better idea of when our goals will be achieved and what resources we may need to gather for each task.

Your strategy to developing a productive year should focus on the following three areas:

• Setting goals
• Big picture planning – planning your year
• Taking action – planning daily actions

Once these areas are identified, you will have a workable strategy for a productive year.

You can also develop some strategies to encourage commitment to your plan including:

• Rewarding yourself at various stages of your plan. Your rewards could be financial or non-financial such as spending time on a relaxing activity.
• Establishing accountability. Create a plan to be accountable to a friend or others in a support group. There are many Reiki Facebook groups that focus on helping other Reiki practitioners who are creating a private practice.

BE SPECIFIC

Goals are best when they are specific. For example, you may want to increase your client workload and subsequent levels of income, however, how can this goal translate into a goal that is actionable, achievable, and measurable.

The key is to be specific with your goal. A specific goal may be to increase your client workload by 1 client per week. This may seem like a small goal, however, it is achievable and measurable. Once you achieve that small goal of one extra client per week, you can then gain the momentum to move on to a new goal which may be a larger increase in client workload.

DEFINE A TIMELINE FOR YOUR GOALS

Research shows that we frequently underestimate the time it will take to complete a task. As your set your plan to achieve your goals, keep in mind that you should realistically allocate time to complete tasks. It’s also useful to be flexible with your plans so that you can catch up on tasks if you need to.

If you’ve undertaken routine tasks before, use your understanding of the time it takes to complete those tasks when developing your goal timeline. If your goal involves tasks you have never done before, use an estimate of the time you want to allocate to that task.

Use your calendar to create your timelines based on the below structure:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Yearly

You can also implement a review period to assess whether any goals need to be changed so that you can keep progressing with your overall goals of improving productivity.

Creating a plan for the year can help you create an overall view of how you want the next year to progress in your private practice.

The first step of planning your year should typically stem from prioritizing your goals. If you have many goals, try and filter them down to your top 3 goals and then rank those goals from most important to least important. If you don’t have a priority list, it can be easy to become distracted by other parts of your business that take your attention from your main goals.

Once you have prioritized your goals, you can begin to plan daily actions which involve identifying the tasks to achieve your goals and using them to create a list of actionable steps. Establishing your daily actions will provide momentum to move your private practice towards your overall goals.

Just like the yearly plan, your daily plan should contain a list of prioritized actions. At the beginning of each day, ask yourself what is the most important task that you would like to achieve that day. Then you can review your schedule and allocate the time that you need to work on your goal. Your goal does not have to be a large or time consuming goal for the day. The best approach may involve setting a main goal for the week and then allocating a small task to each day so that your overall goal can be achieved.

Goal setting and achievement is mostly done in increments so that you can consistently and steadily work on your plan without burning out and becoming overwhelmed.

An example of planning is below. Your weekly goal may be to increase your social media posts. On a daily basis you can break your task down as follows:

MONDAY – find 5 posts to share from other websites. To be scheduled on Wednesday. Examples below:
1. What is Reiki
2. Benefits of Reiki

TUESDAY – Brainstorm 5 more posts that I can share about my business:
1. Opening hours and location of therapy practice
2. How I help my clients
3. How to book an appointment

WEDNESDAY – schedule posts that you sourced on Monday to post to social media over the next 5 days. Use a social media scheduler so the posts will be made automatically

THURSDAY – draft content for posts you will be posting about your business

FRIDAY – schedule posts created on Thursday to post to social media over the next 5 days. Use a social media scheduler so the posts will be made automatically

Each of the above tasks should only take 5-10 minutes per day. As you gain confidence in doing these tasks, the timeframes will become quicker and you will find that you can do all of the above tasks spread over Monday to Friday in 30 minutes on one single day.

Posts that contain content about your business such as opening hours and how to book an appointment can be reposted on an ongoing basis as that information will always be relevant to your potential clients.

TIME BLOCKING

Time blocking is a work productivity concept where you schedule your tasks into a block of time in your calendar. How you block out your work time can vary based on your schedule and availability. Below are some examples:

• Time block an entire day – in a day you clear many small tasks or work on a large project. Eg every Monday you can work on an ebook.
• Time block half a day
• Time block morning or afternoon
• Time block an hour at a time
• Time block 30 minutes
• Time block 5-10 minutes for mini tasks

The more time you block the more you can set aside time for larger projects. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the time to block an entire day for one project, so the next best approach is to block off smaller increments of time where smaller tasks can be undertaken.

An important part of time blocking is that you block out all other tasks and distractions during that time period. Put your answering machine on, turn off phone notifications, and lock your door. This is the time you will dedicate to your task without any interruptions.

As you plan your time blocking keep in mind your energy levels. It may suit you to only time block for 30 minutes at a time and then take a break from that specific activity. Your time block should also be enough time to facilitate a feeling of flow where you can feel minimal pressure to complete a task in a shortened time frame. If you only have a small amount of time, then choose to do tasks that have less cognitive demands.

POMODORO TECHNIQUE

The Pomodoro Technique is a method of time management based on the premise of working in intervals. For this method, the work intervals are usually between 20-30 minutes long. After you complete one work interval, you schedule a 5 minute break and then continue with another 20-30 minute work session. After 3-4 work sessions, you then take a substantially longer break of say 30-60 minutes.

The Pomodoro technique provides a good structure to stay consistently committed to completing your work. This can help if you are struggling with motivation and procrastination. Setting yourself a 30 minute period of work can help provide your brain with a framework of when it can work and relax. If you are struggling to get motivated, you can tell yourself that after on 30 minute block of work, you can reward yourself with a break.

When goals are initially set, it can be an exciting time and your enthusiasm for change and new things may be a great motivator. However, as the year progresses, your energy can waver and the time you have available can be impacted by unexpected events and stressful situations. Before you know it – life interrupts your best plans!

To help keep you on track in times that are stressful or when your motivation decreases, you can implement some strategies to help keep you going.

Below are some tips to help you stay on track with your goals:

• Plan ahead so you can gather all of the resources you need ahead of time
• Take time for self-care
• Carefully plan your breaks to avoid burnout
• Plan for procrastination – be aware of your procrastination patterns so that you can plan around them
• Automate tasks where you can so you don’t waste time on repetitive tasks
• Set up triggers for motivation – stimulate your 5 senses to expand on your energy
• Create a productive work environment to stimulate a positive mind
• Develop a mindfulness practice to set your focused intentions
• Expect that the unexpected can happen and learn how to regroup your thoughts and energy when you need to

We’ve got an excellent backlog of previous posts to help you stay motivated and productive when planning your year.

• 10 Planning Tools for Your Reiki Practice
• 10 Steps to Set Up Your Reiki Practice
• 10 Tools to Boost Your Productivity
• Planning Template for Your Reiki Practice
• Productivity Podcasts and Getting Things Done (GTD)
• Productivity Tools: Stay Focusd vs Rescue Time
• Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity
• Task Management Software For Planning Your Reiki Business

Planning is the foundation for pursuing your Reiki practice business goals. Once your goals are set, you need a system in place to facilitate action.

The right planning tools can help you improve your Reiki business in a variety of ways.

1. Reduce repetitive tasks
2. Establish a clear direction for your business
3. Increase motivation
4. Improve decision making
5. Improve content quality
6. Convert your goals into achievements
7. Keep your business organized
8. Define your business goals
9. Define resources needed for goals
10. Measure goal achievement

The type of planning tools you use will depend on the activities you engage in with your business.

We’ve created a list of 10 tools that can be used for planning in your art therapy business.

1. EXCEL


Excel is typically used with anything involving numbers and calculations, however, it can also be used as a useful planning and scheduling tool. This is primarily because of its structure using rows and columns which will allow you to easily enter and manipulate data.

The ways in which excel can be used for business planning is endless. What significant benefit of using excel, is that there is a vast catalogue of free templates that you can download and use. You can view some of these templates here: https://templates.office.com/en-us/Planners-and-Trackers

Some examples of the templates that are available include:

• Expense tracking
• Trip planner
• Idea planners
• Time sheets
• Calendars
• Lesson plans

Excel is available for use across a variety of platforms including desktop and tablets.

2. TRELLO

Trello organises your projects and tasks into boards using cards. The best offline comparison to how Trello works is to imagine using sticky notes on a pin board. It is great for users who like to view their projects visually. Following on from the pinboard/sticky note comparison, you can easily move your Trello cards around on your project board so that you can keep your workflow and progress organised.

Individual Trello cards can contain a lot of information including images, attachments, checklists and deadlines. Trello can be used on a project by project basis or as a weekly calendar with daily tasks.

You can also use templates created by other users. Trello also has an active blog where the company provides useful tips and ideas on how to manage your Trello planning process.

Trello is a web application tool so can be used on your desktop as well as on mobile devices. Because it is a web application you will have access to your Trello account and boards anywhere as long as you have an internet connection available. This also means that you can share and collaborate with other users. Trello is free and also provides an upgrade service for additional features. The free version will provide all the features that you need to effectively use it for your art therapy business planning purposes.

You can use these inspiring Trello boards as a template for your next project or use them as inspiration to incorporate some of the ideas into your own Trello set up.


3. WUNDERLIST

Wunderlist is a web-based to do list. It is great for keeping a simple actionable list that doesn’t require complex task managing. Wunderlist has a number of useful features that make to do lists more useable including reminders, sharing and copying. You can also email and print your lists if you want to work with a physically printed list during the day.

Because Wunderlist is web-based, it syncs over any of your devices while connected to the internet. This eliminates the need for carrying notebooks.

Wunderlist is free and has upgrade plans for extra features.


4. ASANA


Asana is another project planning tool that is similar to Trello. It’s design and interface is more list based compared to Trello’s visual pinboard style, however, Asana is embracing the card system also.

Asana provides a variety of templates to get you started. Asana has limited templates in the free version, however, the upgraded paid version offers more templates to use.

You can use Asana to plan your day or create a workflow for a single project.


5. SCRIVENER

Scrivener is known more for its robust writing features and doesn’t have the same workflow and planning features that a program like Trello or Asana can provide. It’s advantage over other planning software is in its design focus around long form writing such as blog posts, ebooks or course/workshop content.

Most users of Scrivener would use it to create content once your master business plan is created. As a writing tool, it provides more planning features than other writing programs such as Microsoft Word. Scrivener has its own corkboard system built in to allow you to plan writing content and stay up to date on drafts and finished writing projects.

Scrivener is a paid product and is very affordable given the features it includes.

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As a Reiki practitioner, you want to use your time to help your clients. Administrative tasks can often distract you from that important service. To help manage these administrative tasks we’ve created an Admin package that will help you meet your administrative obligations and manage your client data. 

In addition to your routine administrative tasks, you may also have legal obligations with regard to managing your client records and privacy.

In addition to managing the daily administrative tasks PLUS your client obligations, you also want to grow your business and create a profitable Reiki practice.

To help manage these administrative tasks we’ve created an Admin package that will help you meet your administrative obligations and manage your client data.

This package provides the foundations of the most common administrative tasks to run your practice. The package includes 4 major sections:

• Business Admin – these documents focus on the daily activities of your business including essential business information, establishing your financial and legal policies, and utilizing calendars to help keep you on track on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis.
• Business Development – these documents will help you establish the foundation of why you started your own practice. You can use these documents to discover your business goals and then create a strategy to help you achieve your goals. A project template is included to help you get started on your next successful project.
• Client Admin – these documents will help you manage information and obligations around your clients, including consent, privacy, information requests, and establishing a social media policy in the digital world.
• Email & Letter templates – these templates will help you communicate professionally with clients about the most common and difficult requests.

Using the resources in this package will help you reduce wasted hours on administrative tasks. The premade documents will help you record your business information using streamlined methods.

This package will save hours of your precious time trying to create your own administrative systems, processes, policies, and templates to run your Reiki business.

This package will help reduce the effort and headaches involved in establishing the necessary protocols in your Reiki practice.

The package is full of actionable documents to help put the right processes in place to running your Reiki practice professionally.

The package contains quick and practical advice that can easily be implemented to help you spend less time on admin and more time on client work.

After working through this package you will:

• have an easily accessible list of the essential business information you need for your practice
• easily implement best practice financial and legal policies with the ability to tweak them for your own requirements
• track the most important business metrics you need for your therapy practice
• conduct essential business admin maintenance
• plan your schedule on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis
• discover, define, and develop a strategy to achieve your business goals
• complete your next project using the project template included in the package
• implement client administrative tasks including client intake and important client policies
• communicate professionally with your clients and other essential complimentary health services using the included email and letter templates

This product purchase is a Scrivener template that is imported into your Scrivener Project. All sections are arranged within the Scrivener structure of folders and text documents.

The contents of this package include the following sections:

BUSINESS ADMIN

• Business Details
• Accounts
• Contacts
• Financial Policies
• Fee Schedule
• Cancellation Policy
• Refund Policy
• Legal Policies
• Copyright
• Disclaimers
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Business Trackers
• Social Media Tips
• Business Admin Maintenance
• Calendars

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

• Business Goals
• Project Template

CLIENT ADMIN

• Client Intake Checklist
• Client Call Log
• Consent for Services
• Client Privacy Policy
• Social Media Policy

EMAIL & LETTER TEMPLATES

• Inquiry Reply
• Referral Request
• Reminder Late Payment

These documents are provided in a Scrivener template that you can import to start your own Reiki business administrative set up.

6. EVERNOTE


Evernote is used as an excellent writing tool, however, it has extra features that enable it to be used in a planning capacity for your Reiki business.

You can send information directly from the internet into your Evernote documents. You can share documents privately and publicly and as it is a web-based program, your data is synced so that you can access your account across multiple devices at any time.

Evernote’s organisation system is based on notebooks which are similar to folders. This allows you to organise your notes according to a project and keep sections well defined with individual notes. Evernote also has some other useful planning type features such as reminders and checklists.

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If you need help to develop your planned content, we have an Evernote Blogging Package available in the store. Below is a snapshot of the content within the Evernote Blogging Package. You can find more details on the package on our website here. 

If you want to blog on your Reiki website, then this blogging package is for you.

The blogging package provides you with the foundations of the type of blog posts that would suit a Reiki practitioner and wellbeing therapist. Also included is a step by step easy to follow formula to help you create your title and blog post content.

The resources in this blogging package make the process of creating blog content so much easier. You will save hours of time trying to construct the perfect blog layout because the work has already been done for you.

This blogging package contains tips and tricks that will help motivate you to create blog content with more productive writing effort.

The blogging package is full of actionable advice to help you establish a streamlined process for creating blog content.

This blogging package contains practical advice that can be implemented to help you create your blog content immediately.

After working through this package you will:

• have a better understanding of the approach you should take when planning your blogging content
• construct your own blogging content planner for the year using our planner templates
• Create a catchy blog title for your blog post that will help your blog post gain traction on internet search engines
• use our step by step blog post template to create your blog content
• use our blog post checklist to review your blog post before posting it on your website

This product purchase is a collection of Evernote documents to be saved in your Evernote program.

The contents of this package include the following sections:

BLOG ADMIN

• Blog Post Ideas Worksheet
• Content planner
• Writing Tips

BLOG WRITING

• Types of blog posts
• Creating your blog post title
• Writing methodology
• Blog post template
• Blog post checklist

7. HOOTSUITE


Hootsuite is a social media planner used to schedule your social media posts. Hootsuite does provide a free version, however, more features are available in the paid upgraded plans. In the free plan, you have a limited number of social profiles that you can add to your account. You can also access basic analytics and content scheduling.


8. GOOGLE CALENDAR


Google Calendar is a calendar system for your planning requirements. As it is web-based, you can also have access to your planning information across multiple devices with an internet connection. Google Calendar is free and integrates with other Google products including documents and gmail. You can utilise monthly and weekly views for an overview of your planning process. Google calendar also allows for sharing and collaboration and provides you with reminder options to stay on track with your planning.



9. IFTTT

IFTTT is an automation tool that provides a communication channel between your software, tools and apps. The name is an abbreviation for If This Then That. For eg, IF I post an article to my blog, THEN, share it to my Twitter Page. IFTTT requires you to create a recipe which details the trigger (a post to my blog) and then what the following action is (share to my Twitter page). You can create your own recipes or use recipes that other users have created that are available for public use.



10. ZAPIER


Connect the software you use every day. Just pick an event that sets Zapier in motion, then choose what work should happen automatically. You’ll be up and running in no time. Get your software working together in no time. Email, CRMs, spreadsheets, and more. It’s easy to do it yourself, without writing a single line of code.

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As a Reiki practitioner in your own private practice, you will need to manage various parts of your practice. These areas include business administration, business marketing, client management, and your professional development as a Reiki practitioner.

Managing all of these different parts of your private practice requires managing your time efficiently and effectively. If your tasks aren’t managed effectively, you may find yourself making decisions impulsively as you juggle the demands of your various roles in your practice.

Using task management software can allow you to manage your time and make informed decisions about the ways you can manage your time and organise the resources you need to run your Reiki practice.

There is a variety of task management software options available across different platforms including standalone or cloud-based software. There are also many options available based on the device you use, whether it be PC, MAC or mobile devices.

Good task management software will provide you with the ability to access your task data across a variety of devices so that you can create, record, and manage your tasks wherever you are on any device that you own.

Task management software varies in complexity based on the complexity of the tasks that you want to manage. A simple form of task management software is a digital notepad on your computer or mobile device. Beyond this level would be a to-do list application, then a simple task application, and then a complex task manager application.

Your choice of task management software should suit the tasks you need to manage so that your time is spent on actively completely tasks and not managing your software.

The task management software should have the following basic features:

• Capture new tasks
• Provide a list of things to do
• Summarize the current status of your tasks

Below are a few different options of task management software:

DIGITAL NOTEPAD
These programs let you capture your tasks, however, they don’t contain features that assist in sorting or prioritizing. These software types are not as portable across multiple devices and require that you manually save and send copies to other devices as they possess limited capacity to sync data in real time.

Examples include:

• Notepad
• Microsoft Word
• Apple Notes
• Evernote

TO-DO LIST
These apps are more automated in capturing and organizing data so you can easily access your data to manage your task list at any time.

To-do list apps have more features then digital notepads. To-do list apps are suited to lists that you can use as a checklist or regular routine of tasks. The downside is they lack features that help manage larger projects with more complexity.

Examples of this software include:

• Todoist
• Wunderlist

COMPLEX TASK MANAGER
Complex task managers have extra features that help you group tasks into projects. You can organize your tasks more efficiently using due dates and progress reporting.

Complex task managers also allow you to collaborate with other users and assign tasks to other people that may be involved in the project. Complex task managers can also include features that enable to you to correspond with other users as well as share documents.

Examples of this software include:

• Asana
• Trello

Most complex task managers are free and provide an option to pay for additional features.

Six-Week Start-Up: A step-by-step program for starting your business, making money, and achieving your goals
Author: Rhonda Abrams

Amazon purchase link: Six-Week Start-Up: A step-by-step program for starting your business, making money, and achieving your goals

ABOUT THE BOOK
(from the publisher) 

Written for anyone who has an idea for a business, but doesn’t know how to go about starting it, Six-Week Start-Up 3rd Ed. takes readers from idea to “open-for-business.” This unique book provides in-depth coverage on business concept clarification, goal definition, money matters, market research, sales, marketing, government requirements, hiring employees, and more. Designed to keep readers on track, Six-Week Start-Up 3rd Ed. includes week-by-week checklists, worksheets to sort through important issues and decisions, “Questions to Ask,” “Red-Tape Alerts,” resources, and expert advice from Rhonda Abrams, America’s most read small business columnist.

Book Content:

Week 1. Lay the foundation
Week 2. Get the Info You Need
Week 3. Cut through Red tape
Week 4. Take care of operations
Week 5. Deal with Money Issues
Week 6. open Your Doors!

This book provides you with a framework to launch your Reiki business by using a 6 week start up goal. In reality your Reiki business may take longer than 6 weeks to fully launch, however, the premise of this book will help you START the process of taking those first important steps.

Once you have started this important step, you can quickly gain momentum to keep tackling your overall business goals to establish your Reiki practice. This book helps Reiki practitioners face uncertainty about establishing a business by providing a clear pathway of the steps that you need to take.

The startup list is comprehensive and covers a range of different types of businesses including those that rent a physical space, work from home, or share an office space.

The book also includes a checklist to help you set up a website and undertake online marketing.

Included in the book is an excellent range of worksheets. Some of them are listed below:

• Goals for Starting my Business
• My Personal Goals: The Four Cs
• My Business Values
• My Role Models
• My “Bright Idea”
• My Business Concept
• Basic Business Description
• Discussing Partnership Terms
• Business Name Comparison Chart
• Creating My Identity
• My Research Questions
• Research Sources
• Who Are My Customers?
• My Customer Profile
• Size of My Market
• My Competitors
• Competitors’ Price Comparison Chart
• Potential Strategic Partners
• Organizations to Join
• Types of Legal Forms of US Business Organizations
• People You’ve Given or Promised Stock
• Stock Distribution Plan
• Business Licenses and Permits
• Vital Statistics
• My Support System
• Whom Do I Need on My Team
• How Much Can I Afford?
• My Personnel Policies
• Recruiting Employees
• My Leadership Skills
• Things to Consider when Renting Space
• Location/Space Comparison Chart
• Mobile Office Plan
• Office Move-In Checklist
• Floor Plan Layout
• Designing My Production Process
• Warranties and Service Contracts
• Furniture Shopping List
• Equipment Shopping List
• Supplier Comparison Chart
• My Phone Needs
• My Hardware Needs
• My Software Needs
• Comparison Chart: Internet Hosting Companies
• Distribution Agreement
• Retailer Comparison Chart
• Comparison Chart: Insurance Coverage

The book primarily covers information that relates to doing business in the US, however, this is mostly relevant in ‘Week 3 Cutting Through The Red Tape’ where information about business structure and ownership issues are discussed.

This book contains information that will help you establish a strong foundation for your Reiki business and help guide you in executing the essential steps to start your private Reiki practice.

The book is written in an easy to follow format and encourages you to take action at every step along the way.

Purchase: If this book sounds interesting to you, it can be purchased from Amazon. You can also view the contents pages and a few of the introductory chapters in the sample. Amazon purchase link.